


Code Adam

by CarrierofHeartbreak



Series: Pelts [1]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Breeding, Character Death, Disturbing Themes, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Romance, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, Forced Prostitution, Gang Violence, Grief/Mourning, Kidnapping, Major Original Character(s), Mental Instability, Minor Original Character(s), Murder, Permanent Injury, Physical Abuse, Psychological Drama, Rape/Non-con Elements, Self-Harm, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, T.A.M.E. Shock Collars (Zootopia)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:22:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 15
Words: 105,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25705828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarrierofHeartbreak/pseuds/CarrierofHeartbreak
Summary: A young arctic fox’s life is forever changed when his beautiful white fur catches the attention of an organized group of fur farmers looking for their next payday.Taken from his family, he is then sucked into the criminal underworld of breeding, gambling and luxurious coats.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Pelts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1864297
Comments: 35
Kudos: 52





	1. Intro

My father always liked to use vague visual metaphors to express himself.

His favorite was the rolling ball.

He would place a rubber ball on the desk next to his favorite chair.

On the even surface of the desk, the ball stayed where it was placed.

But the slightest tilt to the desk resulted in the ball rolling down the slope until it fell.

Being made of rubber, the ball usually bounced right back up for him to catch.

Other times, it bounced away as we watched, until it went out of sight.

But it usually came back up.

”This is most mammals,” he would tell me.

Then he would take out the perfectly spherical stone he always held onto.

”This is a fox.”

When placed onto the slope, the stone rolled loudly off of the wood desk and clattered on the floor.

The stone never bounced.

”All it takes is one tilt, and a fox will never make its way back up. One tiny nudge down and we’re down forever.”

I usually watched out of respect for him, but never took the words to heart.

It always made me curious as to why he spoke as if he was already the stone on the floor.

He had it pretty nice, I always thought.

A house in Tundratown, a wife and two pups, even a job working for a very important arctic shrew.

Maybe I was just biased because I got to hang out at Fru Fru’s house when he was working.

But my father was right.

Foxes don’t get a second chance.

My stone rolled the day I thought my best friend had been killed.

The day I saw red for the first time.

The day that set my life hurtling towards the edge of that desk.

That day, when I sank my teeth into the warm fur and muscle of the arctic wolf pup who had thrown that book...

I could hear the loud clattering of my stone hitting the floor.

PELTS Part 1: Code Adam

cover art by [MsRoseAnon](https://mobile.twitter.com/RoseLittleAnon)


	2. The Ball Rolls

  


They don’t know that I can hear them. They talk like the walls can actually hide the sound. Or maybe they just don’t care to keep quiet. Every heightened word is captured by my fluff-filled white ears.

They’re arguing. I’ve never heard my father raise his voice like he was doing now.

My chest feels like someone is reaching in and squeezing my innards to the point of bursting. Not wanting to hear anymore, I fold my ears against my head and try to curl even tighter into my jacket.

Around my eyes, I can feel some fresh moisture starting to dampen the matted fur that had already been soaked and dried multiple times in the past few hours. There also might be a lingered dot or two of dried blood that I hadn’t been able to wipe away with the rag they had given me.

I can’t help but lick my chops with disgust, the lingering taste of blood and fur still present even though I’m sure I had washed it down earlier. The sound of my noisy smacking draws the attention of the tall hippo standing next to me.

He is a cop, though the glint of metal on his chest is dulled in comparison to the sneer he shoots me. I quickly shut my jaw and force myself to make no more noise. The pure distrust and hatred emanating from the officer is enough to scare me into submission, though I wouldn’t have wanted to antagonize him in the first place.

I don’t blame him for hating me. Nor do I blame the parents of the arctic wolf boy for demanding I be removed from the school. My principal isn’t at fault for being forced to remove me. My father is trying his hardest to fight against the school board’s decision to expel me, but even I know it’s a lost cause.

The ball has started rolling. There’s nothing I or anyone else can do to stop me from flying right off the edge and into oblivion now.

Whatever I get from this point on, I deserve.

But I’m not sorry. I will not apologize.

While I regret what my actions have taken from me, they are fully justified in my eyes. That mutt and his pack...I’m honestly surprised nobody had tried taking a bite out of them before today. Maybe it had to do with most of the students of the school being smaller than them, but that wouldn’t explain why they had so much of an issue with me personally.

My father warned me about returning the hostility. We’re foxes, after all. From birth, we’re already predetermined to be nothing but thieves and tricksters. We can live up to that standard set for us or we can rise above, be the better mammals.

But when the alpha of the pack of twelve-year-old arctic wolves stomped up to me earlier today and slapped my books out of my hands...when I heard the shrill shriek of the arctic shrew I had been keeping hidden from them...when I saw the red puddle that soaked out from the edges of my Mammalian History book on the ground…

My vision had clouded over and I lost control of my body. In my mind, nothing mattered anymore. After so many times holding myself back from this pack of mutts, after biting my tongue and holding in my anger towards them, none of it meant anything.

He killed Fru Fru.

I will kill him.

Kill.

KILL!

Every lesson my father ever taught me about being the bigger mammal and showing the world what a true fox could be in this world went out of the window. In their place, every other lesson he had taught me sprung forth.

How to move my paws quickly.

How to keep my weight centered even when charging an opponent.

How to aim my jaws by using the tip of my nose.

How to bite.

How to maim.

How to kill.

Before I had any chance to stop myself, the alpha was on the floor, a large chunk missing from his shoulder. Where had it gone?

The feeling of warm liquid seeping down my chin and the sour taste in my mouth told me exactly where it had gone. The other pups had backed away, not daring to approach the rabid fox even if it meant helping their alpha. Instead of spitting the chunk of flesh out, I had looked at each of them with my craziest glare I could muster and chewed the piece of meat between my jaws.

That hunk of wolf skin...I can still feel it, tainting my taste buds forever. Without thinking, I snap my jaw open and closed again, my facial muscles still sore from the amount of force that went into that bite. The hippo cop grunted again and took a few steps further away from me.

“You’re done here, fox, I hope you know that,” he whispers to me, obviously trying to keep his voice from being heard by the two adults behind the door. I say nothing to him and continue replaying the events of this morning in my head.

What could I have done differently? In what situation could everything have been alright? I could have kept a straight head and just looked around for Fru Fru instead of assuming she had been flattened by that book. Maybe then I would have seen her unharmed body laying only a few inches away from where the book had fallen, her school uniform stained with some of the juice she had been holding. Such an obvious error of perception on my part. But the perceptive part of me, the one that can listen with such focus and see with such clarity, that part had been shut down.

In its place, a monster had taken over.

I thought he had killed my friend, didn’t that mean anything to them? Against me were witnesses saying I attacked him out of nowhere after I had fumbled with some of my books, one of which almost crushed a nearby arctic shrew girl. Of course there were witnesses, some of them I was certain hadn’t even gotten to school yet when the event had taken place.

The only thing that had stopped me from ripping the wolf’s throat out right then was the terrified shriek of the last voice I had expected to ever hear again. Fru Fru, in her little school uniform stained with juice, broke through my blinding rage just by shouting my name.

But the look on her face when my eyes met hers...that look will never leave my mind. She wore such a scared, defeated expression. It was like she wasn’t even looking at me. She probably wasn’t. Whatever she was looking at during that moment, it wasn’t me anymore. It was some feral beast who acted without thinking, only being able to-

THRACK

The banging open of the principal’s door startles me from my thoughts. I didn’t even need to look up at my father to know how the meeting had gone in the office. Even after having tuned out the rest of their conversation, I know. His erratic breathing and the quickened pace of his stride clue me into what had gone down. Without another word, I untuck myself from the ball of fur and fluff I had become and follow him down the hallway, towards the door to the outside world.

For every step I take, I look around and take in one individual detail. This was the last time I was ever going to see these walls again.

The posters telling of the next junior high ice hockey game.

The randomly checkered marble tiles on the floor that display our school colors of blue, white and black.

The many doors leading to many rooms, most of which I have never entered and will never enter.

The low but rumbling grumble of the school’s furnace as it tries to keep up with the cold.

This school has been my everyday life for so long now.

What now?

I walk on silent paws, my tail and ears drooping as low as they can go as I follow my father out of the doors and into the refreshing Tundratown night air. I feel like I can breath a bit better now that I’m out of the heat, but the strong grip on my chest is still painfully present.

I stare at my father’s black dress pants as he leads us to our car. Behind me, I can hear the hippo cop stomping to his own car, stopping to watch us as we leave. I can feel his gaze still on me, maybe to make sure I don’t turn around and bolt back into the school to assault the principal. Yesterday, I would have been offended by the assumption. Today, however, I again can’t blame him. I just swallow my emotions and continue walking.

Around us, the night air carries stray flakes of snow down onto the city. A deep rumbling sound tells me that the weather machines are getting ready to churn out the freezing air for tonight’s scheduled snowstorm. Already, I can feel my paws crunching over fresh snow with every step that I take.

There are hardly any cars on the roads surrounding the school. Most mammals have already taken to their homes so that they don’t have to drive in the upcoming weather. On any other day, we would have long since shut ourselves in with only a window or two open to keep our house nice and chilly.

But I mauled a classmate today.

My body trembles a bit not from the comfortably frigid air, but from the still-fresh memories tugging at my mind.

Before I know it, we reach the car and I walk to the passenger side without a word. My father still hasn’t looked at me at all. I can tell. My ears would have picked up his breath aimed in my direction.

It suddenly dawns on me that once I step into the car with my father, I will lose any outside noise and distractions. I had been letting my senses roam wild so that I wouldn’t have to think about what was to come, but now that will end.

I let out an involuntary whine and let myself into the aging vehicle. The car starts without anything being said between us. The car itself is very quiet, an attribute that I now see as more of a curse. Without anything else to pay attention to, my ears train themselves on my father and his posture becomes my focus.

His breathing is ragged and troubled and so are his movements. He grips the steering wheel and stares out of the window for a while, not making any hints of relaxing. The feeling in my chest grows stronger and more painful by the minute as I wait for him to say or do something. I hate the unending silence that persists between us as we both struggle to find somewhere to start.

FInally, he chooses to just put the car in motion.

The sound of the treads compacting the snow as we move is a welcome shift of focus for me. I still keep my gaze far away from his side of the car, choosing to lean my head up against the window and take in the sights that pass by us.

I love Tundratown with all of my being, especially at night. The cold air and snow-covered ground makes me feel like I belong, the white fur that covers my body blending right into the landscape.

Though the snow starts to remove some of the visibility from the car, I can still see the lights twinkling along every frozen structure. Only one or two mammals can be seen still traveling by ice cap down the rivers that separates the two sides of the road. I can’t tell exactly what species they are, but the size of the one silhouette strongly hints at it being an elephant.

“Adam,” my father’s voice cuts my wandering attention and my senses reel themselves back in. I feel my ears locking themselves against my scalp without even meaning for them to. The pain surrounding my heart grows again and I suddenly feel the need to break through the car’s window to escape. But I know that wouldn’t help the situation any.

I finally look over to my father and take in his features. He’s watching the increasingly bad road conditions, but every few seconds he sneaks a peak at me. I can tell immediately just how much today’s events have exhausted him. He greying fur is more unkempt than he usually keeps it and even his bold, mismatched eyes have lost some of their striking luster.

He just looks tired.

He sighs in a way that tells me that there’s just as big of a weight on his chest as there is on mine, if not a bigger one.

“What you did to that wolf today...Adam, what were you thinking?” his raggedy voice croaks out, hoarse from overuse against the principal. I flinch and look back down to my paws, subconsciously picking away at my claws, thinking there might be some leftover wolf chunks left.

“I…” I start to say, but my voice breaks as I try to use it for the first time since the incident. I clear my throat, but then end up having to choke down some rising bile that the tension had tried pulling to the surface. My father waits for me to continue, but I don’t right away so he proceeds.

“You took a piece of that boy’s shoulder! What have I been telling you for years? Adam, this isn’t something you can just apologize for and work hard to fix! He’s scarred for life now, you’re out of school and that’s not to mention us having to go to court! Where do you think the money for this is going to come from? Cripes, Adam, what if you end up in juvenile detention? What if they take you away from us? Well?!” My father’s voice had gotten increasingly louder as he spoke, like the vent had finally been opened and the pressure he had been building up all day finally came spewing out. With every word, I pull myself further into the carseat and hide inside my jacket.

“I thought he killed Fru Fru,” I manage to whisper out in such a weak voice that it sounds foreign to even myself. His eyes widen and he looks at me for probably a bit longer than he should considering he’s still driving on icy roads.

“What do you mean? What happened to Fru?” he asks, his voice not as panicked as it had been. I sniffle but manage a shaky breath, finally able to plan out just what I want to say.

“The wolf, he...knocked my book out of my hands and it almost landed on her...thought it did when I saw the red on the ground...and I...I don’t know, dad, I just lost it...I barely remember what even happened! It was like I blacked out!” I argue more to myself than him. It still doesn’t make much sense to me how I had lost control so completely. How could it be real? It’s like a bad dream and I’m still waiting to wake up from it.

A sudden look of realization flashes across my father’s face and he slumps back into the seat, his posture deflating. His intimidating presence shrinks back down to something much closer to what I normally see it as. Still something to be respected, but no longer something to be feared.

“Shhhhhit…” he mumbles. “Why didn’t you tell the principal that earlier? I could have-”

“Dad, I did. They didn’t believe me. The rest of his pack all said that I had attacked him for no reason. So did some of the other students and even a teacher. Plus, would it really have mattered? I’m still a fox that took a bite out of another student regardless of cause,” I reason, but can barely tell it’s my voice speaking once I finish. It’s like all the pent up feelings from the day finally caught up to me and burned out every remaining feeling in my body. My eyes aren’t even focusing on anything anymore, instead lazily staring at the car window itself rather than the sights beyond it.

“What about Fru Fru? She could have told the school what that pack did to you and what they almost did to her!”

I scoff and glance over to him, my eyes locking into his and showing him just how pointless this whole situation obviously was by how defeated I am.

“Doesn’t matter, dad. The ball fell.” I return my gaze to the window and pull my jacket up a bit so I can rest my head on the soft fluffy rim. It takes a minute for him to understand what I meant, but I hear his breath catch in his throat when he finally gets it.

The car becomes silent once again, allowing my acute senses to return their focus to the much more calming sounds of the city around us. The snow falls heavily now, but the threads on the car munch through the accumulated frozen powder like it’s not even there.

Though I try to doze, I can’t avoid noticing that we’re taking a different road home than the one we usually do. We’re not going home at all, actually.

“Where are we-”

“Still got work tonight. Figured you wouldn’t mind spending the night at the Big House, especially after today,” he says calmly. His voice isn’t angry anymore and my ears even manage to perk themselves back up. I’m not feeling okay by any means but I’m eager to get back to where I feel safe and where I know Fru Fru and the other teens stay when their parents work nights.

But the last look I had seen on the young arctic shrew’s face pops back into my head and I no longer have anything to look forward to. How would I say anything to her after what she had seen me do?

I grip my coat harder and try to hind inside of it. The car ride that I had been dreading only half an hour earlier now seemed like a haven compared to what awaited me at the Big house.


	3. The Big House

Mr. Big’s mansion is just as big, beautiful and imposing as it always is. Many other mammals fear the large estate just for what the property represents. Mr. Big the arctic shrew is a tiny mammal but he commands a fierce amount of respect from everyone around him. Employees, law enforcement, even bitter rivals know never to blatantly cross him. Beyond even the intimidating crew of polar bears and other large mammals roaming the area inside the fences, there were a number of signs posted that let other wandering paws know to stay out.

My respect for the feared rodent family was pounded into my head by my father before I even knew who Mr. Big was. The first time I entered the property with the rest of my family was a night to remember for all of us. It was made obvious to us very early on that the boss would tolerate no disrespect to him or his loved ones, but if he trusted you, he would go to the ends of the planet to watch over you.

Walking into the Big House right now, however, I feel none of the safety and familiarity that I usually do. The house, while not as warm as the school, seems to take the air from my lungs the moment I enter its walls. Around my father and I, the polar bear guards move aside to let us further into the house, but my ears pick up quickened breaths. I look up to look at them, but they quickly turn their gazes away from me and back to the outside, acting stoic and unaffected.

I feel their distrust looming over me, though. They were never all that warm to me or my father, but now it just seems like they finally have a reason to justify it. If my father notices their looming glares from behind us, he doesn’t show it.

My father is, from what I can tell, the only arctic fox who works for Mr. Big. The rest of the employees consist of mostly polar bears, arctic wolves, and some other large animals unsuited for the cold for some reason. My father’s friend, Renato, is a black jaguar who actually lives in the Rainforest District and has to commute across district borders every day. I don’t know how he manages to live in such a hot, humid place while working in the exact opposite climate.

There was another fox who worked with Mr. Big for a short time, but I heard he got banished from the house over some kind of skunk-related incident. No idea what that was about. He was barely five or so years older than I am when he was here, so I’m not sure why Big expected him to be that good of a worker.

We walk down the dark brown wooden halls of the mansion, passing by many aging paintings and other forms of art as we go. Inside the house, there’s not all that much activity. A few well-dressed arctic lemmings waddle their way past us and into the lounge room, probably just getting off of their day shift rotation. The tiny drumbeat of their paws hitting the hardwood floor tickles my ears in a way that brings the closest thing to a grin that I can manage. I flick my ears from side to side to alleviate the itch.

We reach the door to the ‘daycare’ room as I like to call it. It’s the place where all the young ones stay when their parents are working and can’t leave them home alone unsupervised. Since the ages of the employees are all over the place, so were the children’s. The older ones take care of the younger ones, just like how business operated for the rest of the household. I spent a good amount of time here, even though I usually didn’t need to. My mother could have watched me any of the nights I stayed over here, but I liked being here.

Part of it was that I get along pretty well with the rest of the young ones.

Especially the rambunctious arctic shrew girl who stares right at me as I enter. My ears instantly slam back against my skull and I move myself so that my father stands between us.

“Okay, you stay here for now, Adam, I have to go talk to Mr. Big,” my father states before turning around and moving me by the shoulders away from the doorway. I swallow and freeze up again, trying with all my might not to meet Fru Fru’s eyes. I don’t ever want to see that fearful look in her eyes again. I don’t want to be just another terrifying aspect of her life being that size.

I don’t stop my father as he walks back out and closes the door behind him. Nothing comes out of my mouth and I don’t move at first. My ears swivel every which way, taking in the sounds around me and forming a mental picture.

A few polar bear teens seem to be holding the fort down right now, probably Reggie and his two teen sisters, judging from the three sets of heavy footsteps creaking on the floorboards. The large ursine is technically of the age to be working directly for Mr. Big himself, but seems to prefer dealing with the goings-on of the household. He is very good at it, too. He’s capable of watching over many kids of all ages and species and never seems to tire. He will probably make a good father one day. His sisters, the twins Natalie and Lorraine, are not as responsible as their older brother but still help out when they felt like it.

From the sound of it, the room has a least a couple dozen other children playing with each other, some younger bear cubs and wolf children making up the majority. The squeaking cries of younger rodent children reach my ears and make me blink. When it comes to the very small or very young, it usually comes down to a very certain member of the Big family to watch over them.

“Ah! Young Brisk!” I hear an eldery voice squeak from on top of a large grand oak table. Out of respect for her, I quickly jog over to the table, ignoring my reservations about being seen by Fru Fru.

I arrive at the location of the summons and crouch down to level myself with the eldery shrew.

“Grandmother,” I whisper as I lean the tip of my muzzle in and let her kiss both of my cheeks lightly, her tiny whiskers tickling my face just enough to make me smile. Grandmother, or ‘Gram-mama’ as Mr. Big referred to her as, is just about the sweetest animal I’ve ever met. She’s ancient for a mammal and ever more so considering she’s a shrew. She is technically only the grandmother of Mr. Big himself and the great-grandmother of Fru Fru, but she sees herself as the Grandmother of every mammal who associates themselves with the Big family. Though she hates being called ‘Great-Grandmother,’ saying it’s such a mouthful of words just to call her old.

She smiles warmly at me and lets me step back, though I don’t rise to my full height. I like talking to her on equal levels, partially out of respect and mostly because I know how much it hurts her neck to crane it upwards.

Her eyes, though milky and tired with age, stare straight into my soul and see me for what I really am. For the first time, this makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know if I want her to see me for what I am anymore.

She looks down to shush the crying newborn lemming in her arms. It quickly calms down from her loving embrace and goes back to sleep as she rocks it. A little strand of the silver bun of hair on her head falls down into the infant’s face, causing him to let out a little sneeze before returning to sleep.

“Briskit, my dear boy, it is good to see you here!” Grandmother says as she looks back up to me and blows the stay hair out of her face. She had taken to calling me ‘Briskit,’ a combination of my family name and the fact that I am still technically a fox kit. I look down, unable to hold her gaze.

“Thank you, ma’am, but I don’t think I should be here, not after what I did today…” I mumble. She sighs and gives a knowing nod.

“Ah yes, I heard about that nasty business with that wolf boy,” she says, though her tone remains warm and doesn’t hint at any accusations or distrust. I swallow the stale spit that had been collecting in my mouth. Of course she already knows.

“You heard about what I did?” I ask. I only now notice that the room around us is strangely quiet, even devoid of the footsteps from the polar bear siblings. Either they have finally gotten the other children settled down or they are trying to listen in. The look on Grandmother’s face is neither entirely pleasant nor grim at all. It’s simply a look of understanding.

“I hear everything, Briskit, you know this. While I don’t think what you did was right or worth it, I don’t blame you for being protective over our little Fru Fru,” she explains to me. I pause and look up at her, our eyes meeting. She is staring into me again, watching my reaction to her words. I am honestly surprised. Not even my father had heard that the incident involved Fru Fru.

I look over slowly to the much younger arctic shrew who I know had been watching me this whole time. I’m terrified of what I will see when our eyes meet, but to my immense surprise, she no longer holds the fearful look she had worn that morning. She just sits there in her pink fluffy lounge shirt and pants, snuggled against a teddy bear ten times her size. She doesn’t look like she hates me or wants me to leave the room.

Instead, she looks worried. Worried for me.

I don’t know how to handle this new flow of emotions and turn back to the much older shrew, noticing right away that she had set the lemming in one of the dozen cradles that lined the desk. She reaches up and touches my nose softly, her tiny rodent hands bringing more warmth to me than any jacket could.

I’m shaking.

I hadn’t realized until she had placed her paws on me.

“I…” I choke out, the bubbling rise of emotions starting to overwhelm me again.

“You are family. Family helps family get through the hard times. No matter what,” she assures me with a genuine smile creeping onto her wrinkled features.

I barely manage a nod and sniffle, trying to stop myself from crying in front of the others. Grandmother swipes her paws down against her red dress, smoothing away the folds that had developed from her reaching up for me.

“Take me to the kitchen, dear Briskit. I made you a cannoli,” she turns her gaze up to me and stands at the edge of the desk expectantly. My hand reaches out immediately and grants her a platform to step onto. Her small feet press into the pads of my paw but she barely weighs enough to cause any discomfort. She was at most a mild tickle.

I stand back up to my full height and pull the elderly shrew to my chest protectively. She is used to the routine of being carried around. As a rodent living outside of Little Rodentia and in a house designed for larger animals, every true member of the Big family had long since gotten used to having other animals transport them around.

As we walk, the other cubs and kits do their best to clear a path. I don’t mind their attempts to steer clear of me, but a few of the surprised squeaks hurt. The polar bear siblings stay on their chosen couch. Reggie looks away but the twins keep their gazes firmly locked on me. I can’t get a good idea of what their expressions mean but that’s normal for those two. The twins are always impossible to read.

I try to pay no mind to anyone else in the room from now on. Grandmother takes to humming an old family tune while I carry her, her soft body finding a comfortable place against my chest. My coat is still on, but the flaps are open, so she presses herself into the area right against my black sleeveless shirt.

The kitchen in this room is a bit of an oddity, technically having two kitchens built inside each other. One of them is just rodent-sized and was built into a cubby after the Big family moved in. It contains everything Grandmother needs to partake in her favorite pastime.

A badger girl scrambles to get out of the seat she was sitting at, leaving the kitchen table completely vacant. I walk past the table to the counter and gently move my passenger to the edge. She carefully steps onto the smooth surface and moves her way to the rodent-sized refrigerator, lifting her dress as she walks.

“Ah, you must be hot! Hang your jacket up, dear boy,” I hear her instruct as she prepares her baked dessert for me. I am actually starting to cook in my jacket, but hadn’t noticed it until now. My mind had been everywhere else other than my body. I hurriedly remove one shoulder of the fluffy garment and let it slide off of me the rest of the way. The huge mess of fake fur and synthetic materials falls away and I immediately feel like I weigh half of what I did.

It’s a quick enough task of hanging up my jacket on the coat hanger near the door, so I do without saying anything to Grandmother. She seems to be wrapping up her task so I hurry back to the counter to meet her. Her eyes look upon my form and she blinks in confusion.

“AYE! Young Brisk! You’re nothing but skin and bones, child!” she chides, her eyes conveying disapproval for the first time tonight. “What did I tell you last time? You need to eat more! You look like a pampered vixen, aye!” While she huffs her way through her usual lesson on what a healthy tod should look like, my ears warm up a bit. She has a habit of doing this, but usually not in front of the other children.

I look down at my black sleeveless shirt and try to understand what she means. My body has always been rather slim and somewhat feminine, and it has nothing to do with what I eat. This is just the way I am. It’s why I tend to wear an overstuffed coat wherever I go when I really don’t mind the cold air. The size of the jacket makes me appear like less of a female and fills in my missing mass.

Oh, and it’s also super comfortable as long as I’m in cold enough air to make up for how warm it can be.

“Come! Find yourself something in the icebox to eat! And bring me to the table! But get some food first!” she belts her commands out like a true matriarch. I offer her a tired chuckle and walk my way over to the large white box that is meant to chill the food for the rest of us bigger guys.

Inside, there’s not much I’m interested in eating. Some random varieties of fruits, some yogurt cups, some cricket chip dip, and a large filet of salmon that I’m sure someone would be pissed at me for taking.

Probably the polar bear siblings’ breakfast.

I settle on an apple and return to the patiently waiting shrew on the counter. In her hands rests a tiny plate with what I can already smell to be the cannoli. My stomach is still in knots over the stress of the day and lingering taste of blood, but I could never turn down one of her delicious treats.

Even if they are always rodent-sized.

They are more than just a bit of sweetness on a plate. When Grandmother Big gave you a cannoli, it meant you were part of her family. She sees you as one of her grandchildren. Honestly, seeing the ancient shrew mother holding the plate out to me as I set her down on the table almost brings my emotions storming back around for another go.

She accepts me for what I am AND what I have done. In her eyes, I’m still her little Briskit.

It occurs to me while I try to take my smallest nibble out of the cannoli that she probably came to the children’s room today for me. It wasn’t often that she came here, where there were so many larger, clumsier beings knocking each other around.

I look around to confirm that yes, we have the eyes of every child in the room. At least the ones that were old enough to comprehend what was going on.

Grandmother had given me a cannoli as a sign of acceptance in front of the rest of the children. I’m still one of the Bigs.

The tension in the room deflates and any fear of me seems to dissipate as I finish the delicious treat she had given me. A wolf girl pounces on her friend out of nowhere and the chaos of the room instantly springs back to life. Reggie sighs loudly and stands back up to resume fighting the fire around him.

“Briskit, don’t think you can hide that apple from me,” I hear Grandmother squeak up at me. My ears flick back down towards the table and away from the fray behind us. “You may leave this table once you finish that fruit! And I don’t mean a nibble, I mean the whole apple! The core is the most nutritious part, you know!”

I give a half-smile and pull the apple up out of my pants pocket where I had hidden it in hopes that she would forget. As usual, nothing gets past her.

The apple is gone in a few quick bites and I stand to clean the table off of any juice or cannoli crumbs I may have dropped. Grandmother watches me with an observant eye that I can feel even when I’m facing away from her. She waits patiently as I make sure the kitchen table is as clean as it was when we sat down.

“Well, dear boy, I think it’s about time for lights out, don’t you? My old bones need rest,” she says to me, punctionating her question with a loud yawn. Makes sense, she was usually in bed by now and probably was waiting for me to get here.

Reggie hears this from across the room and suddenly speaks up in a loud, booming voice that betrays his age.

“All right, you heard Grandmother! Everyone pick up what you knocked over and get ready for lights out!” he declares clearly. A few disappointed ‘awws’ arise from some of the younger children but most are familiar with the routine and silently shift from tornado in a trailer park to butler in a mansion. The twins, for as little as they have done, get up and start pulling the multitude of beds out for the children to sleep on. It’s not a time-consuming task, but it does require a bit more strength than the majority of the mammals in the room can manage.

I know what to do at this point as well, so I stand up and tuck my chair in. Lowering my paw to the table’s edge, I again feel the weight of the tiny matriarch grace me. I carry her over to the door to the room and knock three times. The door clicks open and a towering figure sticks his snout through the door to see what I want. When the polar bear guard sees Grandmother standing there in my paw, he startles for only a moment. I still notice it, though.

Guess a cannoli wouldn’t completely solve the problem of the adults not trusting me yet.

The guard is quick to let the arctic shrew onto his giant paw. She turns around once and offers me another two cheek kisses, a small smile present on her face.

“Whatever happens, Adam, we will be here for you. Goodnight,” she offers, her tone full of love. I smile back and am surprised at how genuine it is. I was so certain I would never smile again after this morning, but here I am, smiling the very same night. Turning around, I take in the room around me.

It’s a chaotic room full of mismatched mammals and if our parents didn’t work for the Big family, we probably would have never known each other. But this is where our lives have taken us. We have more family than most will ever know and even if that trust might get tested, the love shared between us always wins out in the end.

I no longer see a room full of strangers like I had when I had been brought here for the first time. I might have made a terrible mistake this morning and I will certainly have to face consequences for my actions in the coming months.

But it’s nice to know that I will always still have all of this here waiting for me when I need it.

The animals in the room start to settle down in their respective beds and cots so I follow suit. I leave my black shirt on but slide my thick black jeans down to reveal the athletic shorts hidden underneath. It was a good thing I had worn them this morning; those jeans are a nightmare to sleep in. I know from experience of course.

The beds are all taken, but that’s fine. I wouldn’t want to take up a bed for myself when it could fit five smaller mammals easily. My paws latch onto a few spare pillows and blankets and I find a spot to settle on top of the striped black and white wool rug. The other children never dare lay down on it because of its unusual smell, but I’m a fox. The smell is oddly familiar.

I tuck myself in for the night, but before I can close my eyes, I feel something crawl its way up onto my chest. It startles me a bit at first, but a quick glance down reveals it to be none other than my best friend Fru Fru. Or maybe she isn’t anymore, I’m not certain.

“...Hey…” she says quietly, not sure how to start. I chew on my cheek and look around nervously, but fold my arms under my head anyway to crane my neck.

Neither of us says anything for at least a minute.

“Are you...okay?” I manage to choke out. She stares at me for a moment before giving my chest a tiny stomp.

“Am I okay? AM I OKAY?! Of course I’m okay! What about you! Are you okay?!” she loses her temper in an instant. At least she’s the same as always.

“What? Why wouldn’t I be okay? You’re the one that nearly got killed by a book!”

“You’re the one who got body slammed by the math teacher and hauled away! I didn’t know what was going to happen to you!” she argues through clenched teeth. For such a small mammal, her position on top of my chest makes her seem so big compared to me.

Wait, I got body slammed? Huh, that little detail of the morning is strangely missing from my memory.

My ears pin themselves back and I sigh down at her. “You don’t have to act like I’m the same fox you knew yesterday,” I mumble. “I know you saw me. You saw what I did to that mutt. You were scared of me. I don’t blame you, Fru Fru. I’m scared, too.” The young shrew harrumphs and places her paws firmly on her hips.

“Okay...yeah, I saw that and I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t...surprised. But I’m definitely not afraid of you, you fluffy idiot. That wolf had it coming for SO long and if it hadn’t been you, I’m sure it would have been someone else taking a chunk out of him. He just gave you a good enough reason for it to finally happen,” she says, pacing slightly on my chest as she does so.

Her expression turns to one of amusement and she smirks down at me. “Plus, it’s pretty nice to know that you would literally lose your mind if something like that ever happened to me,” she teases. I groan and pull one of the pillows over my face to hide the blush I’m definitely sporting. She loves doing this to me.

“Ugggh…” I whine.

“Nothing wrong with the future head of the family being protective of his wife-to-be,” she practically sings down at me. This is torture for me and she knows it. I have no idea where she got the idea that we were meant to be or if she even believes it at all, but she sure as hell loves watching me squirm.

She looks down at the fluffy white body below her feet and ponders something.

“Gram-mama is right, you need to bulk up. How will you protect our lovely little babies if you get blown away by the lightest blizzard?”

“OH MY GOD, STOP,” I beg. She bursts out in squeaky laughter and slides her way down my chest and onto my pillow.

I’m saved from any further shame by Reggie making his last call of the night.

“Okay, everyone, lights out! No talking! And be quiet if you need to use the bathroom! If you’re in the middle of any of the beds, you’re going to have to hold it until morning!” he booms. A few groans sound out from the section of the room with the more populated beds, but are quickly muted by Reggie flicking the light off and plunging the room into darkness.

“G’night, my knight in fluffy white armor,” Fru Fru’s tiny voice tingles my ear. I respond by flicking my ear down and bopping her on the head with it. She lets out a giggle before yawning and settling into her usual place against my cheek.

Outside the windows, I can hear the wind blowing stronger than before. The blizzard must be in full swing now. Here I am in a room full of warm bodies, my best friend nuzzled against me like so many times before, and I even got forgiveness from both my father and Grandmother.

Do I honestly deserve forgiveness so quickly?

I close my eyes with the strangest feeling of contentment buzzing in my chest.

Fru Fru is safe.

My father doesn’t hate me.

The Big family still accepts me.

I am comfortable in a safe place amongst familiar mammals.

My thoughts drift to the wolf boy. I flinch and realize that he’s almost certainly in the hospital now, trying to sleep through the pain of what I can only assume would have been a pretty intense skin graft to fill in the flesh I stole.

I chew on my cheek and let out an involuntary whine, but Fru Fru is quick to smack me with her tail to get me to stop nudging her. I guess she’s right. There’s no good in worrying about it right now, the best thing I can do is get my rest so that I’m prepared for whatever the legal system is getting ready to smother me with.

I had nightmares that night.


	4. Rising Temperatures

The morning comes quicker than I would have liked. Sunlight pours in through the windows of the crowded room, stirring the rest of the mammals who hadn’t already woken up. A few of the children make beelines for the restrooms down the hall, having been trapped between other snoozing cubs the whole night. I had woken up a good bit before dawn, my mind reeling from whatever had tormented me during my sleep.

I can't quite remember all of the details of the nightmare, but I think it had something to do with heat. The heat was so overwhelming that I had torn off my own skin just to get away from it. The flesh that I had exposed from doing this had the same texture as the boy’s gushing shoulder from yesterday morning. I was leaking everywhere and my exposed muscles pulsated with what remained of my heartbeat, but the relief from the heat was apparently worth it to my dream-self. That is the only image I can vividly recall from the night terror: looking down at my skinless body, my dripping pelt warm in my paws.

Fru Fru had slapped me awake after my whining had started to wake up some of the others. Thankfully they managed to get back to sleep quickly and didn’t seem to hold anything against me. Maybe they didn’t even remember.

I never got back to sleep after that.

Sitting in a dark room full of others waiting for the morning to come is disturbingly lonely. Even with the shrew snoozing against my face, I have no one to talk to. No sounds to distract my mind from the fact that today is going to be a stressful one. I still haven’t seen my mother. I doubt my sister was told what had happened, but I don’t know if I can ever be the one she looks up to again. How could I ever hope to set an example from inside a cage?

I groan out loud, my noise hidden by the sounds of the other cubs moving about and getting ready for the day. Fru Fru still sleeps soundly against me so I decide not to wake her. It is the weekend after all, none of the children have to get up early to go to school. Fru Fru probably doesn’t have to go anywhere today unless she feels like hitting up the mall in Little Rodentia.

Folding my arms carefully under my head, as to not disturb my sleeping friend, I take my first look over at the rest of the room. Mammals of all shapes and sizes move about with practiced precision, having gone through this routine so many times before. Reggie effortlessly slides the folding beds back into couches with one paw while carrying the sheets from the night in the other. A sleepy brown marten girl, one of the older denizens of the room, has taken up a perch on his shoulder, letting him carry her around while he works. With his size, he might not even know she’s there.

As I examine those around me from my spot on the rug, my eyes lock with one of the polar bear twins. She is just sitting on one of the folding couches, seemingly doing nothing helpful. I can’t tell which one she is; the twins purposely make it impossible to tell themselves apart by wearing the same clothes everywhere they go, even down to the pajamas.

We stare at each other for a while, her icy blue eyes causing my fur to bristle somewhat. I don’t know what she’s looking for. It’s not a suspicious look or anything, it’s more like the kind of look you would give a species you were seeing for the first time. She is looking at something she hasn’t seen before and whatever it is, it’s captured her attention completely. My ear flicks involuntarily, trying to pick up any noises that might clue me in. She flicks her stubby white ear the same way and I’m officially creeped out. She suddenly licks her chops and gives me a devious grin. I am quick to look away.

My motion finally stirs Fru Fru, her body rolling into the area of my pillow that my head had been compressing. She lets out a tiny squeak before coming to a stop right under my head. Once she fully regains her consciousness, she pouts and scurries her way back up to the topside of the pillow.

“Adaaaaaaam,” she whines in my ear. The tiny vibrations of her voice tickle the sensitive inner hairs in my ear hole and cause it to start flicking wildly. She squeaks again as she is battered by my right ear bopping her on the face repeatedly. “Stop stop stop!”

I let out a laugh and sit up fully, allowing my stiff muscles a nice long stretch. Fru Fru quickly gathers her things and waits for me to pick her up. I do so with practiced precision and care. You don’t become a rodent’s best friend without learning how to move around them. It’s so easy to hurt someone her size if you don’t know what to look out for or how to step.

I manage to slide my jeans and coat back on with one arm, Fru Fru having to duck as I slide her into the sleeve. I hadn’t brought a spare change of clothes, so I have to wear what I wore yesterday until I get home. As a finish buttoning my pants, a familiar shiver runs down my spine and I turn to look at where the twin had been just minutes earlier. She’s no longer there, but I can still feel her gaze on me, somehow. Best if I try to ignore it for now.

The approaching footsteps of at least a dozen or so mammals reaches my ears. Sounds like the night shift getting off for the day and coming to get their young ones.

Great.

The other kids don’t seem to hear them until the door creaks open and a few tired looking adults in black suits (or tracksuits, in some cases) waltz in. Their eyes, strained from having been forced open all night long, all blink around wearily looking for their own children.

The children make it a bit easier for them by finding their own parents and reconnecting with them. A few tired hugs are had as everyone claims their ride home. A slumped over marten steps around the legs of the other employees and his eye is immediately drawn to Reggie’s newest fashion accessory.

“Ey, Bee, time to go!” he shouts up at the polar bear. Reggie blinks down at him before a groan sounds off next to his ear. He jumps a bit and looks over right into the yawning maw of the brown coated mustelid that had been riding him.

“...Breath mint, girl,” Reggie mumbles. Bee smirks at him while stretching her back out and clicking her jaw closed a few times. She quickly scampers down his side and takes her place next to her father, who had walked back out of the room without waiting for her.

For the next several minutes, the children are quickly filed out of the room with their parents. I take a quick peek outside the window to see that the snow is almost level with it. Hopefully all of the mammals leaving with their children today arrived in vehicles capable of plowing through such an accumulation.

As is the routine, my father walks in when almost all of the other children have left. He looks tired, of course, but I notice that his posture isn’t slouched like it was when we arrived. Something about his overall look seems almost hopeful. The beams of the morning sun hit him and his white fur glows right along with his brighter disposition.

“Morning, dad,” I offer, catching his attention. He returns my greeting with a neutral nod, his eyes spotting the shrew girl in my hands. To his credit, he actually manages a small smile as he tips his head to her. Fru Fru waves excitedly the way she always does, her spunk betraying the amount of mutual respect being traded.

“Good to see you alive and well, Miss Big,” he says warmly. His yellow eye glows slightly brighter in the sun, but his blue one holds most of Fru Fru’s attention. It is his dominant eye, after all. The shrew waves a hand to him dismissively.

“Oh, you and him both! I swear, if you keep freaking out every time a larger animal does something dangerous near me, you’re both going to get heart attacks and die! Then where will that leave me, huh? My father will be down a guy and I will be down MY guy!” she says sassily, her hands placed firmly on her hips. She even stomps her foot on me in what I can only assume is a possessive gesture.

My father’s ears splay back and his muzzle scrunches up in confusion. Oh, maybe he hadn’t been around Fru Fru any of the times she had gone off about me and her getting married someday. I can see why hearing his boss’s daughter claim rights to his son would be weird. Fru Fru has a way of getting under everybody’s skin.

“That’s...I will try to avoid that, then,” he finally responds. Good save, dad. Fru Fru gives a nod of approval and stomps on my paw again.

“Adam, before you go, could you bring me to my room? My shower is calling.” Her voice is genuine and lacks any of the mirth she had shown only moments earlier. I comply without question and step past my father into the hallway of the Big House. It truly is a totally different place during the day. The artwork on the walls no longer seems imposing and the increased amount of active mammals moving around creates a pleasant hum of life. I even see a few employees sitting in the lounge room chairs joking about something, their laughter doing a small bit to calm my nerves.

The sounds are great distractions.

I reach the area of the mansion lined with tiny rodent-sized doors that make up the Big Wing. This is where all of the actual Big family lives, including a lot of rooms for extended family in case of large gatherings or reunions. One door stands out, however, being covered with a number of posters and ribbons. Fru Fru had decorated it herself and refuses to take any of it down, despite her father’s pleas.

“Well, guess I’ll be seeing you,” I say as I lower her to her door. She makes a small jump to the floor below and looks back up at me. Uh-oh, that glint is back in her eye.

“It’s a shame, you know,” she starts, twisting a curl in her hair menacingly.

“Shame…?” I proceed with caution.

“Yeah, if only you could fit in my shower with me!” Her teasing voice is so fake and overly whimsical that I can’t help let out a snort.

“You already tried that one a few weeks ago, Fru Fru. Gotta get some new material,” I chuckle with a small shake of my head. The small girl pouts up at me. 

“Okaaay, okay...but seriously, Adam, you’ll be good, right?” Her ability to flip modes is quite the sight to see. She could probably play both good cop and bad cop if she were to ever consider being a cop. Though her father would no doubt smother that passion in its crib.

“Yeah, I think so. Dad doesn’t seem so down anymore. Maybe Mr. Big said something to him?” I ponder. Fru Fru smiles up at me.

“Daddy has your back. He won’t let anything bad happen to you, I promise,” she assures me. For some reason, hearing it from her makes it seem more real. I can only tell myself something so many times before it starts to sound hollow. I smile and lean my head down to her level. She goes through the motions of kissing both of my cheeks goodbye, but catches me by surprise as she plants a harder kiss on the tip of my muzzle. I sputter and stand up right away, my words fumbling out like a broken record. She simply giggles her little head off and turns to enter her room.

“How’s that for ‘new material’ then, hubby? See you soon!” she disappears behind her bedroom door, leaving me a blubbering mess.

“...Damn…” I mumble to myself. My muzzle gets a quick wipe with the back of my coat arm. That girl is going to be the death of me and it probably won’t even take her long to do it.

I find my father waiting right outside the daycare room where I left him and he joins me as I walk to the exit. His hands are in his pockets, a posture I had figured out to be a sign of relaxation for him. Whatever happened between him dropping me off and him picking me up has calmed him down considerably.

Walking out into the fresh, bitingly cold air, I see that the morning shift guys had done a great job of clearing out the parking lot of all of the snow that had piled up. A few of the larger polar bears even wait around for all the night shifters to leave, staying to help tug the newly stuck vehicles to an area with some traction.

On a whim, I give a nod to the largest polar bear as we pass by him. He nods back, to my surprise. Maybe not all of the adults have it out for me after learning what I had done in school. He even walks over to our car and checks the treads out to make sure we will be able to leave without any issues. Our car is a tank in the snow, even sporting its own plow if needed, so he doesn’t have to stick around us for long. He exchanges paw bumps with my father before heading back inside.

My father and I are soon after back out on the road, heading back home. A fresh pit is forming in my gut at the thought of seeing my mother for the first time since the incident. I truly fear that she may not want to talk to me or look at me.

But then I remember Fru Fru. And Grandmother. And my father. Hell, everyone so far has been so willing to look past my actions to see that I am still the same animal at heart. I can only hope that my mother feels the same way.

“Don’t worry about your mother, Adam,” my father speaks up when we are about halfway home. I turn to him with a questioning expression. “Seems like Mr. Big is quite adamant that a young tod so willing to throw himself to the literal wolves for his daughter’s sake is worth saving.” My father actually says this with a relieved grin on his face. I still don’t really understand.

“...What?” is my only reply.

“Mr. Big is sending us to one of his best lawyers. We’re going to have to get showered and ready once we get home, since the lawyer apparently likes to work fast,” he explains. I can only blink over at him, not quite believing my ears. Mr. Big is helping me? After I almost let his daughter get crushed by a book?

“...Oh...um, okay…” I stutter. This doesn’t feel real. Mr. Big’s line of business requires him to have several expert lawyers on call, and if this lawyer is one of his best…

He’s gotta be pretty dang good.

My father’s paw landing on my shoulder jolts me out of my head and back to reality. He gives me a knowing look as his eyes examine my frail posture.

“You’re going to be alright, Adam. WE’RE going to be alright,” he tells me. Again, hearing reassuring words like those are just SO much better than hearing myself repeat them.

“Only problem is…” he sighs. I turn my head to him, ears trained intently on his next words. “The lawyer’s office is somewhere in Savannah Central.”

Oof. Makes sense that this can’t be an easy hour trip and back. Savannah Central is a good trip away from our house, but the worst part about it is the thing that makes me cringe the most: the temperature. I haven’t ever really left Tundratown in my lifetime, and for a good reason. High temperatures seriously bother me. It’s hard enough for me to stay comfortable in a school with a half-broken heater, I can’t imagine how miserable it would be in any of the other districts for me.

I respond with a deep breath and a heavy sigh. Regardless of heat, it’s still better than refusing Mr. Big’s generous help.

“That’s...fine. I’ll be okay,” I say more to myself than my father. He gives me a knowing nod. Neither of us do well outside our biologically predetermined environment.

“So when we get home, make sure to dress for, god, what temperature is it going to be today? Just dress light. Don’t need to wear anything formal today, this is just our first meeting with him,” he assures me.

I guess that means my jacket is going on the hook. I can tell that I’m going to be feeling super self-conscious today without my outer layer. I feel naked already.

The rest of the car ride home passes by silently, though I take to listening to the noises of the town as we pass. In contrast to the night before, I can hear much more activity going on around us. The climate wall is no longer rumbling, telling me that it’s done spitting out snow and has been set back to being basically a giant air conditioner. A lot of snow blowers are running in the residential area already. The average resident doesn’t have a team of polar bears clearing their driveways for them. I allow myself a smile as I get to appreciate the perks of being a member of the Big family.

***

I thought that my mother would have the most extreme reaction to me getting home. As it turns out, the set of paws to reach me when I walk in the door belong to my sister, Bethany. Even though she’s two years younger than me, she definitely has enough strength to push me against the wall. My head thumps against the wood hallway but is cushioned by my coat hood. Before I even know what hit me, I’m staring into the fiercest amber eyes I’ve ever seen.

“You...you…” she tries to say. My father walks in behind us and shuts the door, seemingly unfazed by the current mugging I’m experiencing.

“...Me?” I offer her. She responds with what I think is supposed to be a growl and presses her forehead to mine. Our eyes are only inches away now, her fiery ambers going to war against my icy blue eyes. I want to have the sense to feel apologetic to her, but I seriously don’t know where she is going with this.

“You! Where have you been?!” she demands, punctuating each word with a shove against the wall.

“I spent the night at Fru Fru’s, dad brought me,” I answer breathlessly. Her constant battering of my smaller form shoves all of the air out of my lungs, leaving me no time to gather it back. Her eyes lose a tiny bit of their inferno but she doesn’t back off right away.

“Why did I hear from Stacy that you got into a fight with a wolf pack?! She said she saw blood everywhere! And a chunk of fur! What happened?!” Beth’s voice starts to break just enough for my ears to pick up on it.

“Yes, I got in a fight. No, that fur wasn’t mine, it was the alpha’s,” I respond, trying to choose my words carefully so as to not trigger her anymore. Beth squints her eyes and her paws shoot to my jacket sleeves. She tugs the hefty outer layer away from me before I can stop her and spins me around, looking for injuries. Her nose gets to work testing for any lingering scent of blood, which she doesn’t seem to find. All I can do is stand there awkwardly, my ten year old sister giving me a sniff-down. I guess I should have expected this; Beth relies on her nose the same way I rely on my ears. Her sense of smell is second to no other animal I’ve met.

Our father walks by us, offering nothing more than a sideways glance and a snort.

Thanks for the help, dad.

Before too much longer, she raises back up to face level and glares at me.

“There’s no way. There’s not a scratch on you,” she accuses. I sigh and lean over to pick up my coat so I can store it back on the hook where it belongs.

“Yes way. I got him before he could do anything.”

“...You.”

“Me.”

“That...doesn’t...make...sense!” Instead of my body, she takes to banging her own head against the wooden panels.

“I know,” is what I tell her with a shrug.. It really doesn’t make sense to me either. At their size, the wolves should have been able to slaughter me. The only thing I can think of to explain it is the training dad had been giving me once a week.

“Auuuugh!” she whines and reaches over, her paw latching onto me and pulling me into a frustrated hug. She buries her face into the fur of my chest and squeezes me tightly. My words get stuck in my throat and my arms take over for me.

She trembles as she tries to keep herself from breaking. A stray hiccup or two escapes her but she holds strong.

“I thought you were dead. I heard from the others that you got into a fight and left blood everywhere. Then I don’t hear ANYTHING for an entire day from you OR dad! Then you just...show up here like nothing happened!” she rants, her eyes looking into mine again but looking more hurt than furious.

“Sorry, Beth...I should have called and let you and mom know that I’m okay. It’s been...I’ve had a lot running through my mind this whole time and I guess I just wanted to shut everything else out for a little while,” I say softly, giving her a tight squeeze back. She huffs but nods.

“Dad could have called,” she mumbles.

“Dad was screaming at the principal for the better part of the day then had to go to work,” I tell her. I don’t want her blaming dad for any of this, he is doing his best. Her shoulders slump down and suddenly I’m supporting her entire weight in my arms. My arms tense up and I’m luckily able to catch her before she can bring us both to the ground. Her eyes are already shut. She lets out a sleepy yawn and grumbles weakly.

“...Didn’t get much sleep, I guess,” I say down to her. She nods but doesn’t put her own legs back under her.

“Carry me,” she demands.

“Why should-...hm, you know what, okay. Guess I owe you that much,” I grit my teeth and prepare myself to carry the drowsy vixen up the stairs. She is younger than me, yes, but she’s actually slightly larger than me. Whatever was missing from my genetics that made my body so feminine-looking seemed to have gone straight to her.

The trip up to her room isn’t easy, but I manage it with only a few grunts and stumbles. She grows a smirk on her face that doesn’t leave until I walk into her room and set her down on her own bed. I notice that the sheets are thrown everywhere and even slightly torn, a sign that her night had not been an easy one. It also drags my mood down when I see that her pillow is still wet with what I assume to be old tears.

I’m quick to flip it over to allow her head something dry to rest on.

She falls asleep with her fluffy white tail wrapped around my arm, anchoring me down to make sure I don’t disappear from her life again. Out of all the mammals I’ve hurt in the past day or so, I had been the least considerate to her. She’s more protective of me than I thought.

“I ain’t going anywhere, Beth,” I promise her. As I say this, her sleeping form finally relaxes fully. I guess she heard me in her sleep.

It hurts me to pull away from her tail, but I know there’s one more mammal in the house that I haven’t talked to since the incident. I use as much stealth as possible to sneak out of the room of the sleeping vixen, even being careful not to rattle the doorknob as I close it behind me.

“She didn’t sleep a wink, you know. Locked herself in her room and cried all night,” comes a voice from behind me. I yelp and spin around to face the very fox I was still gathering the courage to face. My mother stands in the hallway in front of me, leaning against it with a tired expression of her own.

Compared to the rest of the family, my mother is the only one of us to have anything resembling a summer coat. She used to live in Sahara Square and her dark grey coat never fully grew out after moving to Tundratown. Now she’s a mix of bright white and grey, giving her a salt-and-pepper look. My dad says her coat is what originally got the two talking.

Her darker coat is matted and frazzled, especially around her eyes. Another jolt of pain shoots through my heart as I realize how much pain I had put these two through.

“Yeah, I could tell…” I agree, my ears flicking back to Beth’s bedroom door as a short snore comes from it.

“So about that fight…” she starts, her tone darkening. My ears fold back and I assume a posture of submission, not willing to fight her on this.

“Just...did you have a good reason?” she asks, her paw rubbing at her eyes to wipe the sleep from them. One of my ears perks up. Is she giving me a thread to grab?

“Uh...yeah, I think. One of them almost killed Fru Fru,” I tell her. She sighs and nods, apparently already having been briefed on my actions. As long as my hide remains un-tanned and I don’t have most of my stuff thrown out, I’ll consider it mercy.

“That’s what your father told me. And look, Adam, I get it, but...Cripes, did you HAVE to tear a whole chunk out of the pup?” Her voice sounds agitated, but I don’t think it’s at me. It sounds more like she’s trying to form a plan in her head about what is going to have to be done in the coming days and she keeps getting fed bad news that just prolongs a solution.

‘Her mind works like a timeline’ my dad once told me.

“Sorry, mom, I just lost it...wasn’t even thinking,” I say. “I saw what I thought was her blood. Wouldn’t you or dad have done the same thing if you thought I had gotten killed?” A bit daring of an argument to make against her, I know.

“Don’t push it, mister,” she warns, her gaze focusing deep into my soul. I nod and scratch the back of my head shyly. She lets out another sigh and seems to resign her point. “Honestly, I shouldn’t be surprised with what your father has been teaching you when I’m not around. I told him when he started those stupid lessons that you weren’t ready to learn about that stuff yet.”

I could take that as an offense, but what proof would I have against her? I already ended up using those moves he taught me to tear apart another student. Without any other reasonable choice, I swallow my pride and remain silent.

“But...I’m just glad you’re okay, Adam. You don’t know how worried I was when I got a call from the school saying you had been involved in a fight and that the police were getting involved. That idiot at the desk wouldn’t even tell me if you were alright or not,” she fumes. I nod along to her side of the story and listen intently.

“Promise me you won’t do anything like that again unless you’re ABSOLUTELY sure that someone’s life is on the line,” she concedes finally.

“I promise,” I say firmly, and I mean it. There’s no way I’m letting myself go through all of this stress and pain again. She looks into my eyes, testing my conviction and finds nothing she can call out. With a nod, she turns to walk her weary body back down the stairs. I start to follow her, but her voice catches in my ears.

“By the way, your father says you have to get ready to go to Savanna Central today. Jump in the shower, your face reeks of shrew,” she prods, her eyes adopting a teasing expression that I’m not used to her wearing. Usually that kind of torment is Fru Fru’s forte. I blush and try to sniff myself, but my nose is so used to the smell that I’m completely blind to it.

“And dress light! You’ve never been outside Tundratown before, I’m honestly a bit excited to see how you’ll handle it.”

“I’ll handle it like a tree in a wildfire,” I grumble. She chuckles and joins dad downstairs, probably to bite his ear off about his lessons.

A quick shower later and I’m already having issues.

There’s very little I own that isn’t meant to keep heat in instead of out. I might not need all the thick wool sweaters to stay warm, but I’ll be damned if I ever give them up. They’re the comfiest things I have. Also, I’m somehow just noticing that my wardrobe is pretty much entirely black. Spare some of the holiday clothing my aunt had knitted for me, I have nothing but black shirts of different sizes to choose from.

So much for staying cool.

I have to settle on the least substantial shirt I have, which is even more revealing than the sleeveless shirt I had just discarded from the previous day. This means I’m going to be walking around an unfamiliar part of Zootopia all day in nothing but a tank top and shorts. Great, my chest fluff is going to do little to convince every animal that sees me that I’m NOT in fact a vixen. My coat won’t even be able to cover me this time.

I pack my clothes away and take a seat on my bed, trying my best to gather my confidence for the day. My ears flick in contentment at the familiar sound of the house around me. There’s an almost constant bubbling sound coming from the walls as the house’s heater fights its endless battle to keep the pipes from freezing solid. My sister is still snoring on the other side of the hall. Mom and dad are talking downstairs, but even with my advanced hearing, I can’t make out what they’re saying. They don’t sound like they’re arguing, so that’s good.

Satisfactorily collected enough, I pick myself up and carry myself out of my room and down the stairs to join my parents. My mother has her head leaning on her paw at the table but my father is moving around with purpose.

“You know, you don’t have to go. You worked last night. I’m more familiar with the area than you are, plus I don’t really mind the heat,” my mother mumbles to my father. Dad is having none of it.

“No, you’re exhausted and it HAS to be me. Mr. Big gave my name to the lawyer and he won’t answer to anyone else. Sorry, but this isn’t up for debate. I’ll be fine, hun. I’m used to saying up, been doing it since before we met,” he assures her with a grin. It’s true, of course, my father has more energy than an animal should with that little sleep.

“If you say so…” she responds weakly.

“I did say so. About four times,” he grins as he gives her a hug from behind. She lifts her paw to his arm and accepts the affection, returning it with a kiss. They rock each other from side to side for far too long and it gets uncomfortable for me.

“Promise me you’ll bring yourselves home safely,” she pleads, looking into his eyes. Even with his heterochromia, my father’s mismatched eyes manage equal levels of warmth.

“Of course I promise.”

“I’m uh...I’m ready,” I cough, startling them out of their cuddle session. They quickly regain their senses and set about doing what they are supposed to be doing. For my mother, this means she gets up to give me a hug before returning to her bed. For my father, this means leading me out of the door and back to our car.

As it turns out, we can’t actually drive straight to Savanna Central with our tank of a vehicle. It’s so specialized for the snow that it can’t be driven into the other districts of Zootopia. Instead, we have to park it at the Tundratown Train Station and take a monorail all the way from here to our destination. Looks like today’s going to be a day full of firsts for me.

The train station is close enough to our house and luckily, there’s plenty of parking. In my mind, I rationalize that anyone who lives in Tundratown and owns a vehicle like ours would rarely have a reason to travel outside the district.

The train that we walk onto is quite an experience. The screeching sounds as it lurches to life, caused by the metal scraping some chunks of ice, is piercing. But I keep my ears open so I don’t miss any of the multitude of other noises. The cars are filled with a ton of animals I’ve never seen or rarely seen before. From some kind of deer to giant animals I don’t even know the names of, my mind is swimming with new information. Some of them growl passively as they breathe, something I can even hear over the electric hum of the moving tube of metal we’re riding in together.

A few of them give me sideways glances, but I’m far too busy twisting my ears every which way to care about what they might already think of me. They might be eying me up, thinking I’m a vixen, but it really doesn’t bother me at the moment.

I notice a tiny walkway leading down to a lower section of the train, a door I would never be able to fit through. My ears pick up a great many squeaks coming from the hole and I grin as I realize that this is where the rodent passengers stay separated from the rest of the passengers so that they don’t get stepped or sat on.

It’s quite the smart idea, I think. I hadn’t even been paying attention to the side of the train when we had walked on, but now I have to find out if that section down below has its own set of tiny doors leading out of the train.

A looming sound draws my attention. I twist around in my seat and look past my father’s head to see a large white structure fast approaching. The rumbling sound emanating from it is so oddly familiar.

“What’s that?” I ask my father, pointing a claw to the horizon. He turns away from the newspaper he had been reading to follow the direction of my pointing. He lets out a small chuckle.

“Climate wall,” he says simply.

Oh yeah, THAT’s what it is. The same climate wall I’m so used to hearing as a distant growl is so close now that I couldn’t even recognize it at first. It is closer to me now than it had ever been and it quickly grows larger and larger.

My curiosity and wonder are extinguished as the train passes through the wall and lets out of the other side…

...directly into the Canyonlands, part of the desert district. The heat moves in a wave along the train, the air conditioning barely being able to fight against it. Most of the other mammals don’t seem to mind it, but never having been outside of the winter air before, my reaction is immediate.

“...OH CRIPES IT’S HOT!”


	5. My Skin

Stepping out of the train and onto the Savanna Central platform is so overwhelming that I almost try to backpedal back into what little air conditioning was offered. The blast of hot, muggy air that barged into the train the second the doors opened was bad enough, but being outside the train is even worse. Without the refreshingly dry, chilly air in my lungs that I’m used to, I struggle to breathe. It’s enough to make me cough a few times as the herd of passengers swarms out into the station, carrying my father and I with them.

My father’s face contorts in distaste, letting me know that I’m not alone in my discomfort. We’ve only gone a short distance but we’re both already panting desperately to shed some of the excess body heat. It pains me when I realize that we haven’t even stepped into the blaring sunlight yet and the heat we are experiencing is only the shaded section of the station.

Even through the misery of the above-freezing temperature, my ears flick wildly around to collect as much data as possible. It goes little to calm me down, though. There’s so many mammals of different sizes packed into the structure that I can’t focus enough to pick out any specific noises. It becomes nothing more than a barrage of tingling white noise in my head and I can’t even tune it out by flattening my ears. Instinctively, I reach up and grab my ears, pressing them as tightly against my cheeks as I can.

It only blocks a little bit of the noise out.

But it’s enough to stop the overload of sensory information. I do my best to follow along behind my father, who is making his way to the blindingly bright area just outside the cover of the station. Just outside, in the sunlight, I see that the density of mammals thins out considerably. The only thing I manage to do is swallow my self-preservation instincts down and prepare myself for some serious overcooking.

I’m not ready.

The instant the blaring rays of the sun touch my fur, I’m on fire. Never in my life had I felt a form of heat so hostile and definite. Why was the sunlight in Tundratown so much easier to endure? What had they done to this part of Zootopia’s climate wall to make it hate them so much? Who would want to live in something like this?

My father notices that I stopped walking before I do. Pushing past a few other animals to get to me, he wraps his paw around my arm and pulls me along after him. A quick glance at his strained expression makes it clear that he’s suffering right along with me. Cripes, even the sidewalk is burning my poor paws. None of the other animals around us seem bothered in the slightest, but for two arctic foxes like us, it’s torture.

I want to look up and see the sights so badly. This is supposed to be a nice first trip outside the constant blizzard I have known my whole life. But the sounds are overwhelming, the sun is blinding and the heat makes me want to die. What animals am I missing with my eyes locked on the ground? What sounds am I deaf to because I have my paws over my ears? I can’t even make out what the different smells mean, everything being so alien and mixed.

I feel a tingling sensation like the one I had felt this morning when the twin stared at me. I turn around to look at my surroundings, but the unfiltered sun keeps me from making out any shapes around me. It’s just a flurry of motion, leaving only the vibrations from the animals walking giving me any hints at their size.

My father, having apparently just remembered that he had brought his sunglasses, whips them out, flicks them open and places them on his snout in one smooth motion. He is finally able to blink around and take stock of his location. I hear a rustling of his pants pocket and a crumpling of paper as he takes out what looks like a folded up note.

“Let’s see…” he mumbles to himself, though I can barely hear him through my paws. “Corner of Flock Street, which is…” he pauses and looks around. “East from here.”

He starts walking in the general direction of where the message tells him to go and I do my best to follow. As we move, the endless, indistinguishable hum of the main hub area dies down, only to be replaced with fewer, but louder voices.

Lining the streets on either side are stalls of every shape and size. Mammals look to be selling whatever they think might fetch a price, from fruits and veggies down to obviously knock-off rodent sized purses. It’s in the shade of some of this area that I’m finally able to take in some of the new animals. Sheep seem to be quite numerous in this area, some of them selling clothing made from their own wool. I didn’t think I would ever want to wear someone else’s outer layer, but I’ll be darned if some of those creations aren’t quality. If we have time on our way back, I may want to stop at one of those stalls and see if they have anything really soft I can add to my collection. Maybe pick up something colorful for mom and Beth.

Bethany would probably be salivating from all the varieties of food being cooked out in the open. The scents of spiced veggies and different cheeses waft through the air, tantalizing the noses of every passing mammal, especially those with heightened senses. I think I even smell some fish being cooked somewhere, but can’t manage to pin down where that stall is. Even though my sense of smell is nothing compared to my sister’s, my mouth waters at the thought of biting into some freshly cooked salmon.

Besides for the clothing and food stalls, various knick-knacks are also touted, their sellers being the most vocal. Apparently it takes some extra effort to sell stuff that you can’t wrap around your hips or shove in your face. The first thing I notice is a giraffe, the first one I’ve ever seen up close. He has to crouch over to avoid bumping his noggin on the overhead tarp and seems to be trying to sell some sort of giraffe-length neck support band. To me, though, it just looks like he’s wearing a long length of silver ductwork. Without many other giraffes around, I feel kinda bad for him. Maybe he couldn’t afford a stall in an area closer to the tall-mammal district, if there is even such a thing.

My father, lost in his sense of direction, misses or intentionally ignores all of this. I want to stop at a few of the stalls but know that time isn’t something we can spend much of right now.

That changes when I spot a vendor set up with a multitude of sunglasses, varying in size and shape. Looking up just enough to see where my dad’s arm is, I give him a poke and gesture towards the cheap-looking table. He jerks out of his hypnosis and turns to where I’m pointing, his eyes falling on the wares.

He lifts a brow at me but I can’t return the look with the sun in my eyes. A soft sigh escapes his lips and we change our direction to head to the table.

We have to step over a group of rodents traveling together for safety and they actually manage a chorus of squeaky ‘thank you’s. This small interaction is the first familiar thing I’ve felt since I left home. I guess inside, even though we all live in vastly different places and climates, we’re still animals. We can be just as polite or rude as we want and no simple change in temperature will change us. Perhaps me being out here today in the heat isn’t the dramatic life event I thought it was.

The sign on the sunglasses stand reads ‘Quality! Designer Sunglasses 50% Off Today Only!’ Though there are no actual prices listed anywhere for any of them so the original price being discounted is a mystery.

As we approach the table, I immediately notice the two sets of fox ears peeking up from behind it. We get even closer and see that the one fox is actually really small. His head and ears are really large compared to his body. What kind of fox is this? He’s snoring loudly inside a box of his own merch, a pair of sunglasses starting to slip at an angle down his miniature muzzle.

The other fox is awake but is equally distracted, his nose shoved into what I think might be a dirty magazine. The only word I can make out through the glaring light is ‘Vixens.’ It’s times like this that I thank the fox gods that I was spared having a superior sense of smell; I don’t want one of my few remaining senses clogged up with the aroma of worked-up tod. He’s facing away from us, but the color of his fur and rough size of him seems oddly familiar. He’s wearing a bright yellow t-shirt and tan shorts, colors much more suited for the intense heat.

My father’s fur bristles as he takes in the fox managing the table. A rumble starts to form in the back of his neck but he’s quick to stifle it. He folds his arms and clears his throat, drawing nothing more than an ear flick from the fox.

“How much is fifty percent off then?” my dad asks, his voice firm. I look at the different sets of tinted plastic, scanning for one that would fit my head. It doesn’t matter that they’re low quality, I just need something so I can see where I’m going. I find a pair that looks big enough for me and doesn’t seem to be falling apart yet. The red fox’s ear flicks in my direction and he seems to know which one I’m holding just from the sound I make. His ears are accustomed to this level of noise, something I envy greatly right now.

“Ah, a fine choice, my good fellow. That one there’s quite a catch, a mint condition Stagsetter with a carbon fiber frame and strength-tested lenses. Tell you what, you sound like a mammal with taste, I could let that item there go for only seventy five big ones.” He says all this without even looking up at us, the whole speech probably having been given hundreds of times before. My father’s ear flicks in annoyance and he rests his chin in his paw.

“Sounds like a good deal. Would you happen to accept partial trades?” Dad says after a few moments of silence. The tod lets out a scoff and flips the page of his dirty mag, apparently having lost interest in the conversation.

“Look bud, if you’re not good on the cash then I’m sure there’s another stand somewhere-”

“What? Not interested in skunk butt rugs?” my father cuts him off, the vendor’s voice catching in his throat. His ears fly down against his head and he finally turns to look at us, his terrified eyes meeting the smoldering glare of my father. The fox swallows nervously, looking from my father to me and then back again.

“Heeeey Mr. Brisk…” he greets, trying to sound anything other than frightened. It doesn’t work. It occurs to me that the only people who call my father Mr. Brisk are either business partners or complete strangers.

It is obvious that they know each other, so that leaves…

Oh yeah! I know this tod. This is the one who Mr. Big kicked out for scamming him. Dad said something about a skunk rug? Ew, I can’t imagine putting that in our house.

“Cut the shit, Wilde. I see you’re super and busy and all, but my son here- you remember him- needs to be able to see today. And before you say anything else, I know exactly who you got all these from and I doubt you even know what carbon fiber is,” my dad shuts him down every time he tries to speak and he soon learns to just nod and accept it. “So, anything to say?”

“N-no... the first pair is free, sir, of course,” Wilde stutters. My father nods in agreement and grabs the pair I had selected, not letting Wilde change his mind.

“Oh, and Nicholas, stay away from selling these knockoff sunglasses. They’re incredibly easy to spot and track down later, especially if you bought them locally. If you’re truly intent on having THIS be your lifestyle from now on, sell something that can’t be traced later. Like food or drinks, I don’t know. Just make sure you have the proper paperwork.”

Nick gapes at him fearfully, but the focused look in his eyes and flicking of his ears tells me that he is absorbing the advice. I look up at my father with a new feeling tingling in my gut.

I never get to see him work. I don’t even know what he really does besides work for Mr. Big. He always keeps his line of work so secret from the rest of us, maybe to spare us the worry. Yet here he is, talking to a street scammer like he’s a professional passing down the torch.

I don’t know how to feel about this.

My dad tosses me the shades and steps off to the side to take another look at the note, this time sporting a map that he hadn’t been holding earlier. Where did he get that? I did notice a few of them for sale at some of the stalls but he had seemed so engrossed in his paper that I hadn’t bothered asking. Him checking himself out of the interaction leaves me alone with the sulking fox.

“Wilde, right?” I pipe up, catching his attention. With the glasses on my face, I can finally look up and focus on the older fox. Judging from his posture and the glossy red sheen of his coat, he appears to be around twenty, but the age of his friend is a complete mystery to me. He can be a child for all I know. Wilde raises a brow at me, seemingly unsure of why I’m talking to him.

“Nick is fine, kid. You’re...Adam, right?” he responds weakly. Looks like the dressing down my father gave him has thoroughly bummed him out. Or it might be like a ghost of his recent mistakes coming to haunt him, if my father’s words are true.

“Mhmm. Listen, I’m sorry about my dad. He’s just very loyal to the Bigs,” I say. Nick tilts his head, a baffled frown reaching his muzzle.

“Hey, there, it’s no problem. Gave me some good advice, I guess. We, uh...we good?”

“Yep. So... skunk butt?” I inquire. He cringes and looks away, his eyes scanning for possible escape routes from the conversation.

“Not the best mammal to scam, definitely. But honestly, um...Nick, what you did wasn’t all that bad,” I say honestly. His ears perk up and flick to my direction. “Didn’t hurt anybody at least. Mr. Big has more money than he knows what to do with, at least judging by all the shopping sprees Fru Fru goes on. Buying one overpriced junk rug won’t hurt him. How many mammals can say they even own one of those?”

My attempts to cheer him up a bit are a bit too obvious, even for me. But while he probably doesn’t believe exactly what I’m telling him, the motivation reaches him. He settles forward with a small grin and reaches up, patting the patch of fluff between my ears.

“You know, you ain’t bad, kid,” he says with a bit of a relieved huff. “Us foxes gotta help each other out, right? Here, try some of this.” He pulls out a bottle of some kind of weird gel and squirts some into his paw. After a few rubs, he runs his paws over my ears and head, spreading the gel around. My fur takes on a shine similar to his and a flow of cold goodness shoots down my face. The chilling effect that the gel brings is so sudden and satisfying that I almost lose my balance. Whatever this stuff is, I need more of it.

“Wha...wha....” I can’t even form words. The constant feeling of being roasted alive is finally over and it feels so good! He grins knowingly and shows me the bottle. It’s a light green tube with a few glistening leaves drawn on them. I don’t notice it until he holds the source up to me, but the gel gives off a very nice smell that reminds me of the holidays. Bethany would probably be overwhelmed by how potent the aroma is.

“Peppermint gel,” he answers the question I’m unable to ask. “On coats like ours, it reflects the sunlight and cools the skin. Also keeps the bugs away. I’ve been told it’s supposed to attract mates, but so far the only one willing to stay within ten feet of me is that little guy over there.” He points a claw back to his tiny snoozing fox friend, who snorts loudly in return.

“It’s so much better!” I sing out loud, removing my paws from my ears so I can try spreading the gel to as much as my face as possible. Nick gives me a curious glance.

“It’s even kinda hot out for me, and I’m used to it. Can’t imagine what you two are going through right now,” he says, examining my thick white winter coat.

“It’s way too hot here! I can’t stand it,” I answer. Nick looks down at the bottle in his claws and thinks for a few seconds, at war with himself. He then sighs and holds the bottle out for me.

“Here, Snowball. You need this more than I do,” he says as he passes me the cooling ointment. I stare down at the bottle, not sure what to say. Just a few minutes ago he was trying to rip us off for a cheap pair of sunglasses and now he’s giving me the gift of comfort for free.

“Wow, uh...thanks, Nick!” I exclaim, my paws a blur as I pop the cap and gather some more to put on my shoulders and chest. Nick does a smirking shrug and yawns out loud, trying not to seem like it is a nice thing he is doing. The sound of his tail flicking happily betrays his cool-guy persona though.

“Don’t mention it. What are you guys even doing outside the Big Freeze anyway? With coats like yours, I can’t imagine you’ve spent much time outside the cold.” Once I finish shivering from how amazing the feeling of the gel is on my body, I answer him.

“Oh, I got into a fight at school and now we’re heading to see a lawyer,” I explain, the rundown of events getting more and more easy to process each time I say it out loud. Nick’s eyes narrow a bit and his posture loses its charm.

“Figures. Fox sticks up for himself and the law comes crashing down on him,” he grumbles through clenched teeth.

“Oh, no, I technically started it,” I start, but notice his gaze shifting to one of disapproval. “But I only did it because I thought he hurt my friend.” He seems satisfied with that and lowers himself back down into his chair.

“You look pretty clean to me. Take anything away from the fight?” he laughs. Maybe I just don’t understand that he’s trying to joke around, but I answer truthfully.

“Yeah, a chunk of his shoulder.”

Nick stops laughing and gives me a wide-eyed, shocked expression.

“...Damn.”

No kidding.

My ears, no longer held down by my paws, flick to a spot down the road from where we’re talking. I don’t know what it was I heard, but something about it triggers my senses and catches my attention. Nick notices me looking off to the side and follows my gaze. He apparently sees nothing out of the ordinary.

“What’s wrong there, Snowball?” he asks. It takes me a few seconds to break out of my alert state but I eventually find my words again.

“...Nothing, I guess,” I concede and turn back to him. My ears, however, flick wildly around me and collect any kind of noise that could possibly be a repeat of before.

“Adam, come on!” my father’s voice breaks through the sudden tension. He is looking at me with his arms folded, something I know to mean that he is losing patience. I say a quick farewell to the russet fox and scamper after my father. A quick tingle of alertness washes over me but I do my best to convince myself that it’s just sensory overload from not being used to this level of noise. There are even more animals lining the streets now as it approaches lunchtime. My paws soon find their way back up to my ears and resume their grip on them.

My father takes a sniff of the air as we talk together, noticing the stinging scent of the peppermint gel. He detects Nick’s gift in my pocket but chooses to say nothing of it, either out of appreciation or maybe understanding. Seeing his wandering eyes, I take the bottle from my pocket and paw it to him. He doesn’t know what to do with it at first, but I twist my paws together and go through the motions of rubbing myself with the imaginary goop. He picks up on what I’m conveying to him quickly and applies some of the gel to his ears and head. The look of relief on his face makes me laugh. The weight he has been carrying since coming face to face with his ex-coworker drains away and is replaced with a pleasant hum. He finishes covering his exposed fur and passes the bottle back to me.

Now we’re a couple of snow white, minty smelling canines wandering through a never ending field of multicolored animals, standing out like a pair of sore thumbs.

It feels like we have been walking for hours now, the lunch rush of animals walking and vehicles passing slowing down somewhat. My paws are starting to hurt from the sun-heated sidewalk and I consider rubbing the bottoms of them down with the gel.

I hope we take some form of public transportation back to the train station on our way back.

Another shiver runs up my spine and I spin around in place, my eyes darting around wildly, looking for the source of my apprehension. Even with my hands on my ears, I heard something that time. Even above the roar of the mammals around us, I can tell something is around me.

Something unfriendly.

My heart starts pumping blood at a quickened pace and I’m suddenly lighter on my paws. I can’t see anything out of the ordinary as I walk backwards with my tail to my father, besides for maybe a few various animals giving me strange looks. The lack of evidence of an aggressor does little to calm my racing heart.

After a few minutes of jogging backwards, I’m forced to turn back to my father so we can cross the street. The concentration of sheep and other bovines increases the closer we get to Flock Street. The vendor section is far behind us now and the sidewalks are little more than walkways for the groups of sheep to walk together. They tend to move in groups of ten or more, so the walkway space is needed to move around them.

The smell of the peppermint gel seems to keep them away from us. I feel weird with all of those horizontal pupils washing over me whenever we walk by a bunch of them. They don’t really give us hostile looks, but they do stare at us. Maybe it has to do with us being two arctic foxes in full winter coats walking around a very warm part of Zootopia. It’s my guess that any arctic foxes managing to live in this area would be mostly grey like mom was years ago.

The sun beats down on us as we cross another intersection, but the gel keeps us cool enough and the sunglasses allow us enough vision to get by. I notice that there are a lot of busses and other many-seater vehicles allowing large groups to travel together. They’re filled with tons of sheep, obviously.

After crossing the street, my father pulls out the note one more time and compares it to the map in his other paw. He slows down his pace to a crawl and I get the feeling that we’re about to arrive at our destination.

Around us, there are sheep, sheep and a lot more sheep. The crowds on the walkways look more like living herds of cotton balls than pedestrians. That’s not to say they are small, however; most of them are larger than me by a good bit and their commonly shared facial structures look almost intimidating. The shops lining the roads cater to all things that sheep need, from personal electric shears to bathing tools. The restaurants seem to offer strictly herbivorous menus, which causes my stomach to twist a bit. We haven’t eaten yet and my stomach is starting to form a knot in my core. Not sure I would be able to find anything I would want to eat along these strips, however. Might have to wait until we’re headed back. Maybe some of those vendors will still be selling their foods by then. The smell of the salmon lingers in my mind even through the overwhelming scent of peppermint and makes my mouth water.

“Keep your eyes open, the note says he should be waiting for us somewhere around here,” my father’s voice breaks through the constant chatter of sheep folk. I do as he says and I look around, still trying to ignore the feeling of danger that keeps washing over me.

It would help if I knew what kind of animal I’m looking for.

An unexpected impact on my shoulder causes me to yelp and jump forward to escape it. With my defences already raised, the sudden grasp I feel scares the daylights out of me. I turn around, expecting to see some sort of aggressor, but instead see a fairly normal looking black ram in a nice black suit. He’s not as round as most of the sheep around us, so he must have recently sheared. In this sun and heat, it makes sense that a black sheep would need to work harder to stay cool. Especially if he always wears black suits like this one.

My father, having heard my cry of surprise, whips around on full alert. He quickly drops his defences when he sees who’s standing behind us, though.

“Hey hey there, you must be the Brisks, father and son. Adam must be you, then,” he starts, his mouth moving so fast that I have a hard time processing his words. “My name is J.G. Whitewool, and yes, I know the name is ironic. You can just call me Jorge, yes you can. Welcome welcome to Flock Street, and Savanna Central in general, from the looks of it. First time out of Tundratown, huh? Good good, glad to see some clients coming to me instead of me going there. Have to keep the wool short, you see? Quite hot for a black wooly around here, but going out to the blizzard district makes me quite cold. Though with a client like mine, I suppose I can put up with a certain level of occasional coldhoof. Can’t win either way, can I? Now then, I was just about to head out to get some food. Why don’t you two join me and we can get started on working out this little pickle. And rest assured, my fine fox friends, that’s all this will look like after I’m done here. You won’t have to worry your heads a bit about the details, no, leave that to me.”

My father and I both stand there slack-jawed, trying to work out what he was saying.

Mr. Big had said that the lawyer likes to work fast. But apparently that also means living fast. Talking fast. And walking fast, if his pace is anything to go by. Before we can answer, Jorge is already off down the sidewalk, expertly stepping around the groups of sheep passing us by.

My father and I turn to each other, shrug and take off after him to catch up. With how much ground Jorge is covering, you would think he is running. But by watching him, I see that his pace is nothing more than a quick walk with some fancy hoofwork to minimize the amount of work needed to travel fast.

It’s a struggle to keep up with him, but my father manages. I, on the other paw, have to basically run to keep up. Running isn’t an easy thing to do with my paws latched onto my ears. I can manage this pace for a short while, but it’s draining my energy to do so.

My father engages in some sort of small talk with Jorge as we move, but I can’t make out what they’re saying over the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears. The crowds of sheep are getting more tightly-packed as we get closer to the dining areas and I almost lose sight of the two a few times.

I’m panting again and my ears are starting to overheat. A fox’s ears are a natural way of letting off excess body heat, so covering them is trapping that all in and slow-roasting my brain. I drop my paws and let my ears flick back up, some cooler air flooding in and clearing my senses somewhat. The sounds come rushing back into my mind, immediately taking hold of my attention and keeping me from focusing right away.

I look up from the ground and realize that I lost track of my father and Jorge among the crowds of wool swarming around me. My eyes dart around, looking for any sign of the black ram or the white tod who I’m supposed to be following.

I can see nothing but wool. Brown, white, tan, even some blonde color wool.

But I see no black.

Just then, the world goes mute except for one sound. Time seems to slow around me as my ears splay backwards and focus on the singular beat of approaching steps. They’re not like the casual pace of the crowds around me. These steps are heavy, with purpose and are getting quicker as they approach. My heart skips a beat and every bit of fur on my body stands straight up as I spin around to see what’s coming at me.

The figure is on me before my paws can find enough traction to carry me away. The environment around me becomes a blur of motion and colors as a rough grip finds its way around my throat. Whatever this animal is, it’s wearing a heavy coat of some kind and is much larger than I am.

My body is pulled around like a ragdoll, though I have enough sense to struggle immediately. The sunglasses I had gotten from Nick fall to the ground and burst into pieces as I flail around wildly.

This animal is a lot stronger than me. It lifts me clear off the ground and tries to get a better grip on me. Another limb tries multiple times to latch over my muzzle to keep it gripped shut. Before it can silence me, though, I manage to let out the sharpest cry I’ve ever heard myself make.

“DAD!”

My world becomes dulled as something hard and powerful impacts the back of my skull. Pain fills my senses, the colors of the sidewalk around me blur together like a chalk drawing in the rain. The animal manages to finally grip my mouth shut and I find myself pulled into its coat, the darkness becoming my new home. Before the world goes dark and I black out, I hear one voice rise above the shocked bleats of the sheep around me.

“ADAM!”


	6. Shred

“ADAM!”

The world around me flickers back into existence just long enough for me to feel myself being jostled and moved at a high speed. There are noises echoing in my head but the jolts of pain keep me from forming any thoughts about them. The world escapes me for a second time.

“STOP! STOP YOU FUCKING CUNT!”

My father’s voice, sounding strained, brings me back out of the void for a few more seconds. I still can’t see anything from behind the blackness of the coat around me. The hard, rocky sounds coming from the space beneath the coat hint me in that the animal carrying me is some sort of hooved animal. Whatever it is, it doesn’t look where it’s going and I feel my body impacted by something heavy and stationary; most likely a bystander unable to move out of the way in time. I feel another set of hard objects, feeling much like ram horns, slam into my head and I’m out like a light.

“SOMEBODY HELP! HE’S GOT MY KIT! THAT’S MY KIT!”

I’m again awakened by my father, whose voice is noticeably closer than during my last brief bit of consciousness. His voice is broken, like he’s trying not to sob while also remaining furious and threatening. He’s even louder than he was with the principal. I can hear his growling breaths only body-lengths away now.

He’s catching up.

My aggressor turns to the right very suddenly, lurching my already-aching body to the side. I notice that there’s a very pungent smell all around me, the same kind I would smell when walking into the school gymnasium. This animal is rough, very strong and hasn’t washed in quite awhile. This observation doesn’t help me at all, but it’s hard to formulate any other thoughts with my vision swirling so badly.

The little light that managed to peek through the stitching of the coat disappears suddenly. The temperature lowers considerably so we must have just entered somewhere untouched by sun for the majority of the day. We’re still moving in a line though, so I doubt we’re in any kind of building yet.

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” my father’s voice erupts from only paw-lengths behind me. He tries to say more, but the only sounds that come out are feral barks and snarls. The pained screams spewing forth from him echo on both sides of me. We’re in some kind of alleyway. I can hear his claws on the walkway under us, the numerous scratching sounds a stark contrast from the heavy clops of the animal whose arm remains firmly latched around my throat. The large animal looming over me is starting to make pained wheezing noises, like his body is starting to wear out.

The sound of my father’s paws disappears from the ground for a brief instant before my aggressor is sent lurching forward with a grunt. The coat is pulled tighter to me, the majority of the material being sent to the back, where my father’s weight now rests on it.

“ARGHREEE!” the beast finally makes a noise. I’ve never heard such a demonic squeal before in my life. It’s so sudden and shocking that I almost wet myself and the coat around me. My senses are starting to even out, enough so that I start focusing my ears again. I can finally move some of my limbs again! The useless ragdoll flailing I had been subjected to is replaced with renewed struggling.

Even from the other side of the beast’s form, I can feel the flurry of motion my father is causing. The jacket makes loud tearing noises as the material is separated in jagged lines by furious claws and teeth.

To his credit, the beast keeps moving at roughly the same pace, even with a fully grown arctic fox going to town on his back.

There are no surrounding sounds of chatter or surprised sheep anymore, a fact that I instantly find concerning. It’s just us three now. There’s no longer any other mammals around that could possibly step in to help us. It occurs to me that we might be running right into an area the beast wants to be.

The back of the jacket finally tears away, creating an opening for my father’s muzzle and claws to rip into. I can hear my father’s teeth click together even through the mouthful of flesh that he bites into.

This finally makes the beast stumble.

“FUCK!” I hear a gruff, bassy voice scream out into the narrow passageway. His grip on my throat loosens and allows me my first full breath. It also gives me just enough wiggle room to squirm my lower jaw into position.

I bite as hard as I think I can. My still-sore jaw muscles ache from overuse but I force them to work overtime. A foul taste of greasy, thick fur floods into my mouth, followed quickly by the sickeningly familiar taste of blood.

The bite does the trick and the arm retracts from my throat, allowing me to freefall back down to the hard ground below me. I slam into the unwashed cement and my head flairs back up in pain from the sudden jolt.

I let out a bark of agony and curl into a ball, holding my head in my arms in a failing attempt to get my vision stable again. The world around me almost goes dark again but I force myself to stay awake this time. My ears catch the sounds of violence happening next to me. I turn my head slowly and see my aggressor for the first time. What had once been a large figure shrouded in concealed clothing is now a mostly exposed brute with a light layer of fur and horrifying features. It’s definitely a pig of some kind, but I’ve never seen one this big before. He’s dark brown and grey with obviously trained muscles barely hidden by the tattered remains of what used to be a coat. Two jagged tusks jut out from his snarling snout and curl into a deadly fork for him to use as a weapon. His eyes, wild and black, dart from side to side as he tries to pinpoint the location of the fox scurrying over him like an angry wasp.

He tries to reach behind him to grab my father, but his arms are too wide and short to make contact. His failure is punished with another series of tugging bites and slashing claws. I can see blood leaking out from multiple spots all around him now, staining his remaining coat and grey undershirt with crimson liquid.

With a frustrated squeal, the pig lines up his back with the brick wall behind them and throws himself backwards against it. My father notices and jumps over the pig’s shoulder just in time to avoid being crushed, but his new position is within grabbing distance of the beast. He gets yanked out of the air by a hooved fist and ends up dangling by his ankle in front of the face of the tusked monster. He tries to curl himself up to bite at the pig’s fist, but the pig is quick to spin him in his grip so that he’s now being held by his throat. In a display of power and speed unnatural for a mammal his size, the pig whips my father around and slams him into the wall, sending a cracking noise reverberating in the narrow walls of the dark alley.

My heart stops as the pained yelp of my father enters my ears. He struggles weakly but I can see that eyes are unfocused just like mine had been. The pig snarls in his face and lets out a series of guttural bellows that hold no actual meaning, but the emotion behind them is clear. He’s furious at how much pain my father inflicted on him but is so angry that he can no longer form words.

My focus is on my father, his body losing steam as the pig’s grip around his neck increases and cuts off the flow of blood to his brain. He tries so hard to stay awake, but even from my position on the ground, I can see the light starting to dim in his eyes.

The pig sneers at his opponent and brings his other fist up to help finish my father off.

Do something.

A horrible feeling of bile and terror rises in my throat.

Bite him, claw him, anything.

This is a nightmare. There’s no way my father is being killed by a random stranger in an alleyway. I must be in a coma back home. Maybe I actually lost that fight horribly and those pups beat me within an inch of my life. This whole situation is just a pain and painkiller-fueled night terror and I’m going to wake up at any-

DAD IS GOING TO DIE!

The world around me turns red and the blinding feeling of pure malice takes over my body once again. I’m back in that school hallway with the wolf pup, my jaws flying forward to take a bite out of him. I aim with my nose just like I practiced. This wolf pup is much bigger than the last one and I have to jump up high to reach my target. He’s going to kill dad if I don’t kill him.

Kill.

KILL!

“RAAAAAAAGH!” I feel myself shriek as I fly at the pig. My body is on autopilot now, my mind nothing more than a passenger along for the ride. Feral instincts kick in, telling my personal monster to go for the eyes and face.

My claws are sharp and they will slice.

My teeth are sharp and they will puncture.

My ears are focused and they will listen.

My jaw is strong and it will crush.

My body is small and it will be hard to hit.

The pig turns as the sound of my warcry, but he’s nowhere near quick enough to do anything to defend himself from me. I land on the back of his neck and my teeth clamp into his ear, the thin bit of skin giving away easily.

With a yell, the pig drops my father and goes into panic-mode. His arms beat at me, but my ears can hear the air moving around his arms and I’m able to dodge every strike he sends out. His twisting motions swing me around to the front of his face, which he doesn’t seem to realize is bad for him. My claws latch onto the skin around his eyes and dig in, causing the large stranger to let out more pained squeals. My bottom paws rest on each of his two tusks, keeping track of where they are so that he can’t use them against me in any way.

My father, coughing on the ground, stares up at me in shock. If he had actually seen how I get when I fight before, maybe he wouldn’t be so surprised at my feral nature now. I fight the pig alone, but I don’t care. I just want my father safe and I want to go home. This monster is keeping me from my desires and I’m going to MAKE SURE HE NEVER BOTHERS US AGAIN!  
I hear what sounds like voices moving closer from the entrance of the alleyway.

YES!

Some mammals must have finally heard the sounds of the violent struggle and came to investigate! Suddenly it’s not just the three of us battling to the death in our own little world anymore. The world outside this alley still exists. There are good mammals living all around us and I bet most of them would have done something if they had known. The feeling of blood in my claws and skin around my teeth still feels so real, though. The pig is still real and he’s still trying to shake me off.

I hold on despite the voices drawing in closer, their paces seeming to accelerate as they figure out what’s happening. My father pulls himself to his standing height, though on shaky paws, and turns to the approaching group of mammals.

“Help!” he chokes out despite the swelling in his neck. “Fucker is trying to kitnap my son!” My dad sees the mammals coming and waves them on to tell them to hurry up. From the shadows teasing the corners of my vision, I can see that they’re mostly larger mammals, unlikely to be native to this area.

Something’s wrong.

I look away from the pig just in time to see the largest mammal, an adult black bear, plow my already-weakened father over. The angered looks of these new animals and their hostile postures clue me in to who they are.

My father receives a powerful kick from the bear, another painful-sounding series of pops reaching my ears. His body flies into the chain-link fence that separates one side of the alley from another. My ears focus on him, trying with all my might to detect any signs of life coming from him. A low grunt of pain and some slight movement distract me from the large feline coming from behind me.

“Get this little faggot off of me!” the pig wails.

I feel a clawed paw dig into my back and I let out a yelp. The pig sees that he’s gotten his backup and again swipes at me in another attempt to get me to let go of his face. Between having a much larger cat of some kind pulling at me and having to dodge the pig’s fist, I realize that I have to let go. But I will not leave empty-pawed.

My teeth clamp down into the pig’s ear tightly and I dig my claws into his face deeper. Then, using the strength of the cat pulling on me, I shove myself backwards so that I’m ripped out instead of harmlessly plucked away. Another series of squeals and curses erupts from the swine as the skin of his ear and face is ripped away. My paws leave long gashes trailing down his face and most of his one ear is now gripped in my teeth, the severed slice of meat leaking out some more sour blood into my mouth. The taste of the pig is disgusting and I almost gag on the slightly fuzzy ear, but I persist with my attack and give one last kick to his snout with all my remaining energy. My paw meets the bone, the impact traveling through my leg and into my spine. But I don’t pull back, not yet. Just as dad taught me, I follow through with the kick upon impact, ignoring the terrible pain shooting through my paw.

A loud and satisfying crack emanates from the pig’s snout and I feel my paw pass through the bone.

The alleyway goes quiet except for the sound of the broken tusk clattering on the cement.

The pig stays quiet as we all watch him. It takes a few moments for the pain of both his ear, his face and his snout to catch up with him.

Then he lets out the most disturbing sound I’ve ever heard. It’s a mix of squealing and furious anger, culminating into what I’m sure I will hear the day I end up in hell. His legs fall out from under him and he collapses forward onto his fists. From my position, hoisted up by the cat a good distance off the ground, I can still hear the droplets of his blood hitting the ground like rain.

The pig makes some gagging sounds before letting loose a torrent of foul-smelling bile that mixes with the small pool of blood forms under him, creating a gross brown concoction.

“Holy shit!” I hear one of the newcomers exclaim. I look around and my mind is finally able to take count of the recent arrivals. The largest and most noticeable is the big black bear moving towards my father. The second is the cat holding me; a quick twist of my head reveals it to be a male leopard. The final two are a pair of stocky billy goats with brown fur. Unlike the bear and leopard, who are wearing concealing clothing similar to the pig, the two goats are dressed casually. One could easily mistake them for being local residents out for a jog in this part of town. The taller of the two goats had been the one to vocalize his shock at the scene before him.

“Fuck me, he’s torn up pretty bad. Gotta get him to Doc,” the other goat says as the two rush over to the pig and help him back up to his hooves. The injured swine grunts but lets the two pull him to a vertical position. They’re a bit shorter than him but look just as muscular relative to their size.

They definitely all know each other. Was this the pig’s plan all along?

“Bruce, I thought you said you could handle them!” comes a roar from the black bear who stands looming over my father, trying to decide what to do next. The only bleeding member of the group snarls and whips his shredded face to the bear.

“Shut it! I’m the only one he didn’t hear coming! What about you? I’m not even supposed to be the one picking these runts up! You know I can’t run that fast, you fat fuck!” Bruce retorts, some of his words slurring as he tends to his wounded face. He then turns his busted snout to the pair of goats assisting him. “Why was I the one getting chased? You two are supposed to snatch and run, not me!”

The goats look to the ground, not wanting to respond to the very irate hog. He snorts and spits out a glob of blood and mucus onto the ground, seemingly satisfied that they know he’s pissed.

The leopard holding me in the air remains silent, content to just do his part in restraining me.

“Little cunt caught up to me and tore the shit out of my back. Then his faggot spawn bit me and jumped on my head,” he tells them. The bear looks away from my father for a moment to examine the state of his partner.

“Yeah, no shit. You look like you went through the business end of a woodchipper,” he jokes, a deep booming chuckle slipping from his black lips.

That small distraction is all my father needs.

SIlently and on weightless paws, my father comes back to life and glides up the bear’s chest. Even with my advanced hearing, I don’t notice his movement until he’s already on top of his assailant. The bear turns just in time to see a glint of metal before half of his vision is robbed forever.

My father’s aim with a blade is perfect. His pocket knife, the only one of his weapons he had thought to bring with him today, slides quickly through the bear’s left eye and back out again. The big cat holding me stumbles at the sight, backpedaling to get some distance between himself and the revived fox. The goats follow suit, tugging Bruce back with them as they retreat.

The bear roars in pain and swings his wide arms at the attacking canine. My father is already gone, scampering down the bear’s back. He leaves small stabs with his knife wherever he goes and the bear is helpless to stop him, as large and cumbersome as he is. This makes the bear scream louder, his tone changing from anger to fear, like he is being swarmed by wasps. He might as well be, since my father is so much faster than he is. By the time the bear feels a stab and reaches to respond, my father is already somewhere else with his knife puncturing another hole in his skin.

Bruce sees what’s happening and is the first one to react.

“SON OF A BITCH!” he shouts, blood and spittle flying from his snout. I see him turn to me and my blood runs cold. He yanks off the torn remains of his overcoat, revealing his shirt and worn jeans underneath. But what catches my eyes and renews my squirming is the giant sheath strapped to his hip. He reaches for me and I try to make myself shut my eyes. With his other hoof, he grips the handle of his oversized bowie knife and yanks the deadly tool out. I’ve never seen a knife this big or threatening, especially since he seems intent on using it on me.

His fist finds its way back around my neck and he yanks from the paws of the leopard, who is still gaping at what’s happening to his other friend. The pressure around my neck cuts off most of my air and starts to make me feel lightheaded again. My body still finds some strength to struggle, though, and I let my bottom paws kick around for any bit of meat they might be able to reach. Bruce learned from his last interaction with me and holds me out at a distance so I can’t reach him. I see his other arm moving but don’t know what’s happening until I feel the cold prick of metal teasing the skin of my throat. I swallow and feel the edge of the blade pressed against me, ready to glide through the precious arteries under my skin.

This is it.

I’m going to die.

Mom and Beth pop into my head, the thought of leaving them hurting more than any physical damage I’ve sustained. It hurts even more when I remember that I had promised both of them that I would come home again.

Fru Fru and Grandmother are next in my mind. Will they know what happened to me? Will there ever be any sense of closure to losing a loved one so suddenly, even if you know how it happened?

This isn’t fair. Why do I have to die?

Actually…

I deserve this. This is happening because I hurt that wolf. I showed the universe that I was just another violent animal so I’m being punished. And even worse, I’m taking my father down with me.

I choke out a pained sob even with the vice-like grip around my throat. The world around me grows dim and my body falls limp in Bruce’s grasp. I just want to get it over with. Maybe my father could escape once I’m gone. Just so long as someone watches over mom and Beth. They’re definitely going to need someone there to help them after this.

Tears stream down my cheeks as more of my consciousness starts to slip away.

“EY! Loogat what I got here!” Bruce shouts, holding me up like a dirty dishrag. My father looks up from his victim and our eyes meet. The knife is pressed even harder against my skin. If he were to jerk the knife to the side at this moment, I would be dead. One smooth motion of Bruce’s arm is all that separates me from the forever after. I just hope it doesn’t hurt too bad.

My father jumps off of the bear and shuffles away from him, holding the knife out so that Bruce can see it. The half-blind ursine stumbles back and slumps against the brick, his paws nursing the new hole in his head.

“Okay, I’m off. Don’t hurt him...please,” my father pleads softly, his fighting flame snuffed out by the sight of me with a knife to my throat. I must look pathetic, barely conscious with my limbs and tail hanging uselessly under me. I just hope he’s not too ashamed of me for getting captured so easily. Now I’m just another hostage keeping him from fighting.

“Ha! This pup? This what you want?” Bruce taunts, moving the knife away from my neck by a few hair lengths. He then goes through the motions of slicing across my throat, causing my father to stumble forward and cry out in anguished shock.

“NO!”

I’m shivering, but I notice no pain. The sound of liquid dripping from me isn't coming from my throat, but from my pants. I had wet myself as he went to make the fatal cut. Warm, uncomfortable urine now soaks my pants and leaks down my legs all the way to my paws. I should be embarrassed, but I’m not.

The goats and leopard step back as they smell my mess, but Bruce doesn’t flinch at all; his gaze remains locked with my father’s. Either he hasn’t noticed my accident or he’s used to animals in his grasp wetting themselves.

My father notices that I’m not bleeding out and straightens himself back up. He looks down at his bloodied knife and grimaces it before chucking it to the side as a measure of submission. Bruce watches this with his beady little eyes and chuckles.

“Good dog. Keep it up and follow our instructions or you’ll get to watch the light leave the eyes of this little kit,” he booms confidently. My dad looks down and shudders, but nods all the same.

Don’t, dad!

Please! Just run! One of us is better than both of us!

I’m getting more used to the idea of leaving this life behind, as long as I leave it by myself. No more stress or pain, just an endless rest. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

Bruce gestures for the goats and leopard to move in and restrain my father. It kills me inside to see a fox I respect so much, with so much more potential, defeated because I’m a moron and got caught. If I wasn’t here, he’d probably be finishing up with this group of assholes right now. That knife could have ended the lives of these five lowlifes and maybe saved many innocent mammals from getting taken in the future.

But I’m here.

As long as Bruce’s knife is wedged against my throat, my father will not retaliate.

I watch with a dull, lifeless expression as the trio of kitnappers picks my father up and binds his front paws together behind his back. They let him stay standing, though. I thought they might try to tie his muzzle shut, but I guess the threat of slicing me open is enough to keep him subdued.

“Connor, you watch the fox,” Bruce snorts. The leopard nods and grabs onto my father from behind, securing him. “Billy, help Lex back to his paws.” The shorter but more muscular of the two goats runs to the bear’s aid. “And Bobby, get the door, already. I can’t believe all this noise hasn’t brought the whole precinct down on our heads. Hurry!”

It seems weird to me that he’s using their names out loud so casually around the two mammals they’re trying to harm. He probably doesn’t care since he knows we won’t be able to do anything useful with that information.

The taller goat moves his way over to a random dumpster in the alley next to us. I notice that it looks like nobody uses it and there’s probably no way to actually get it taken out without dragging it to the street. It’s something that you would only notice was out of place if you were looking for it.

Bobby lets out a grunt of effort, his hooves resting against the side of the dumpster. After a few seconds, I hear an oddly quiet sliding sound. A large metal box like that should make at least a screeching sound, if not an outright grinding wail. This dumpster sounds more like it’s moving along a track.

Like it’s on wheels.

Bobby moves the dumpster in an expertly straight line until it hits a dead stop. Looking on the ground, I can see a large metal hatch that was previously undetectable. My eyes widen slightly as I realize just how intentional Bruce’s escape had been. He hadn’t ran into this alleyway because he was trying to hide from my father. This is exactly where he wanted to end up the whole time.

Whatever operation this group of animals is part of, it’s complex enough to have doors hidden under sliding dumpsters. This does nothing to quell the cold pit in my stomach that had started the moment I had first stepped off the train.

My father notices this new detail and has an equally disturbed expression appear on his face.

“Get the door,” Bruce commands. Bobby obliges, quickly unlocking the door with some sort of key and pulling the metal hatch open. Bruce moves to it and the others are quick to follow after him. Billy has to guide Lex around by his paw since the bear is missing an eye and is already weak from blood loss. Connor trails after the rest of us with my father being shoved ahead of him.

As Bruce stands over the hole in the ground, I get my first peek at the stairs leading down into the darkness. It’s some kind of makeshift tunnel built right under the surface. How long has this been here? It doesn’t seem safe to hollow out sections of ground right under thousands of tons of metal and concrete.

The pig holding me reaches down into a hidden corner and flicks some kind of switch. The tunnel lights up after a few moments, illuminating the wires that run along each side of the dirt hallway. Every few body-lengths there are support beams set up to ensure that there are no cave-ins. As quickly as I’m exposed to the tunnel from the outside, I’m brought into it and get to see it up close. Bruce isn’t careful with how he moves while I’m in his fist, using my body for support every step he takes into the dimly lit tunnel. I’m mashed against the wall multiple times as we descend lower, feeling my already-beaten body pressed even further towards its breaking point under his weight.

We reach the bottom of the stairs, my ears trained behind me listening to the sounds of the rest of the group making their own way down. The stairs are wooden, but are surprisingly sturdy and are able to take the weight of multiple large mammals without creaking much.

Ahead of us is more tunnel, all of it lit with the same dull lights. The electric hum of exposed wiring permeates the entire length of the tunnel and tingles my ears to the point of making them flick every few seconds. If I weren’t in the grip of a violent pig, and we weren’t in mortal danger, I would think this tunnel belonged to some sort of old mineshaft.

The dirt floor is strangely smoothed down, like it’s been either pressed with a machine or been walked on extensively. This isn’t a quick job tunnel; this must have required dozens of mammals working tirelessly over a long period of time to make. Especially if they had to do it without anyone from the city knowing.

“Now,” Bruce speaks up in my ear, yanking me from my thoughts. “I’m going to put this away.” He gestures with the knife in his other fist. “You try anything, anything at all, and I’ll take those pretty little ears of yours.” My ears flatten against my head instinctively. “Yeah, those. We won’t be needing those anyway, Boss won’t mind if you show up without them.”

I swallow and start shivering again but his grip around my throat keeps me from nodding. He snorts in my face, sending some lingering blood and spittle flying onto my face. I resign to shut my eyes and let him do whatever. I just want this all to end. If I behave, maybe they’ll leave my father alone, too.

With a sliding motion and a click, the monstrous knife is again sealed away. Even without it physically there, I can still feel the edge of the blade tempting the skin of my neck to part ways for it.

Bruce resumes walking once the others all make their way down, minus Bobby. Apparently he has to stay behind to cover the door back up. He’s the lucky one in all this, not having to get his hooves bloody at all and he gets to go back to the world of the living above us. Must be nice, having the freedom to just walk out of this situation.

Suddenly the sun and heat don’t seem so bad. At least I was free then. Just father and son enjoying a day out with each other. Before it went to shit.

My paw still hurts. I think something happened to it when I kicked Bruce in the face. It aches in such a way that tells me that it will be really painful if I try to put any force on it.

Behind us, I can hear Lex whimpering weakly while Billy guides him forward. He still has his giant paws covering his face, a steady dripping of blood still audible even from where I am. I can’t imagine how much pain he must be in. Having your eye popped plus getting stabbed all over can’t be easy to stomach. I don’t want to sympathize with my attackers, but the sight of the gelatinous eyeball goo triggered some physical sickness in me.

Billy does his best to support the larger animal, whispering encouraging words to him to keep him moving. I could faintly pick up phrases like ‘Be there soon’ and ‘Doc will know,’ but the rest is lost to me.

Connor trails the back of the line with my father, both of whom are stoic and silent as we march. Connor as a mammal doesn’t seem to have much to say and might have a weak stomach, judging from the way he stumbled back in shock during my father’s assault.

I notice as we walk that we pass by multiple forks in the tunnels that lead to who knows where. The only thing I can make of it is that these tunnels must run throughout a large majority of this district, if not Zootopia as a whole. This tunnel project disturbs me more and more as I question the ‘hows’ and ‘whys.’ How many other mammals have been led through these same dirt pathways to their fates? I realize in horror that we are probably just the most recent victims in a much larger, longer-lived series of abductions using these tunnels. Operating with this kind of scale, for even a short amount of time, would take an extraordinary amount of animalpower and covering up. What chance will there be that my father and I will ever see the light of day again?

I have to close my eyes and fold my ears to keep some of the darker thoughts from taking my body over. If I had any liquid left in my bladder, I would have most likely emptied it several more times.

We move for what seems like days, but I know it’s only a few hours. Lex slows us down several times to get fresh bandages, made from Billy’s shirt, wrapped around his missing eye. But those few breaks in pace only last a minute or so each.

Bruce leads us through many different forks in the tunnel system, seemingly knowing the layout of them by heart. If my father and I were to escape, we would have no hope of finding our way back to the surface without the larger animals catching us. Plus we wouldn’t even be able to open the hatch in the unlikely instance of finding it; Bobby had long since replaced the dumpster.

We are stuck down here regardless of what we do.

We lose.

I open my eyes, but I can’t feel myself actually managing to focus on anything. All I feel is empty inside and my hazy gaze must reflect that.

“Here we are, folks,” Bruce says as we approach an oddity in the tunnels; an empty area where a bunch of tunnels let out. Seems we’ve reached the middle of the spiderweb. At the center of the room sits a heavy metal door with at least a dozen locks on it. This door is vertical, unlike the hatch we had crawled in. The room itself seems more finished, with some wooden walls fixed around the doorway. A few shelves and hooks line these walls, a variety of tools and supplies resting on them. The supplies seem clean and new; they’ve probably been put down here rather recently. The tools, on the other paw, have obviously seen great use and are quite old in design.

A shiver runs down my spine again as I ponder the age of these tunnels.

Bruce fishes a large set of keys out of his pocket and gets to work unlocking the giant door. One key at a time he works, though each key he uses is always the right one. He must have them memorized or numbered somehow.

I hear a shuffle to the side of us and see Billy and Lex, the smaller of the two having walked over to the supplies rack and grabbed a few medical kits with his curled horns. My father stands behind us with Connor looking over him calmly.

I make eye contact with my father for the first time in hours. He looks back up at me with hopeless, dead eyes and I can’t help but bark out another sob. I don’t want my father to look at me like we’re already dead. He’s a fighter! He taught me to fight! If he’s lost hope, then what hope is there for me to have?

Bruce ignores my cries and finishes unlocking the door, opening it up to reveal an actual furnished room. The walls are cement and the floors are simple tile, but it’s still a room. We’re exiting the tunnel system. This has to be the basement of a building of some kind.

I notice as Bruce carries me through the doorway that the room is set up like a hospital room of some sort, if hospital rooms had fridges and television sets lined up at different locations. It’s like a lounge room and a hospital room ate each other and I don’t know how to feel about it.

A surprised gasp draws my attention away from the decor. I look around at the source of the noise and see the first new face in a while. She’s a wolverine of mixed browns and is quite imposing thanks to her body structure. Her clawed paws cover her muzzle as she takes in the sad-looking procession of bloodied animals marching through the door.

“What the hell is this?!” she demands, standing up from the table she had been sitting at. A plate of cricket pasta lays steaming and forgotten, nothing but an interrupted lunch now. My stomach has been growling and empty for hours, but I doubt I could manage any food down my gullet right now even if I had access to it. The stress my body has been in this whole time would probably make anything I ate shoot right back up.

“New catch,” Bruce huffs. The door clicks shut as Conner passes through, a series of clunks signaling the relocking of all the tumblers. There’s no possible way to get through that now. My father looks around, taking in the sights. His eyes aren’t lifeless anymore and he looks to be working something out in his head. Please dad, think of something...anything.

“What happened to you?” the wolverine prods, hobbling over to Lex and helping Billy with supporting the black bear’s weight.

“The ‘new catch’ happened to us, Doc,” Bruce grumbles, shaking my body around for good measure. My neck, stiff from being held in the same position for hours on end, gives a few satisfying cracks and jolts some of my nerves back to life. Doc looks at my father and I in disbelief.

“THESE two did this to you?” her voice hints that she thinks she’s being teased. The larger hog, not wanting to listen to how badly he was wounded by two much smaller and weaker mammals, just snorts and lifts me higher into the air.

“Older one seems to be trained or something. Maybe military, don’t know or care,” Bruce tries to explain, but it seems more like he’s listing possible excuses for his lack of dominance. Doc gives off a ‘Hmm’ sound and goes back to helping Lex and Billy.

Connor, sensing his guard duty is about over, leaves my father and walks over to the fridge and pops it open, exposing a plethora of different iced snacks and beverages. He grabs a few chilled waters and starts chugging them like he’s trying to win a contest.

Lex, for the first time since we had entered the tunnels, speaks up.

“Old one got me, not you. The little one is the one who fucked your face up,” Lex says, obviously trying to antagonize the hog for some reason. Bruce shoots a hateful glare at the black bear, though it is lost since his only working eye is still covered in torn shirt.

“At least I almost got the older one. Had’m pinned against the wall by the neck until the little cunt here jumped on my head,” Bruce argues. “And what was I supposed to do? The kit is the target after all, Boss would have my head if I damaged such pristine white fur.”

My father twitches at these words and whips his head in the direction of Bruce and me. I stare back at him, not liking the look of horrified realization written on his face. Something about what Bruce just said seems to have triggered something in my father.

The other animals don’t notice it. They continue moving around and doing their jobs, Doc tending to Lex while Connor and Billy start to assist her. The hog holding me finally drops me, my legs giving out under me and sending me to the floor. Even standing on my injured paw for a second was enough to send a massive bolt of pain through my leg and up my spine. Something is definitely wrong with it, like I thought.

The ground is cold and hard, but the lack of overwhelming heat in the room is somewhat comforting. If I can just convince them to let me lay here in agony until I die of old age, maybe that will be a better life than whatever they have planned for me. I don’t get back up right away, ignoring the sound of Bruce walking over to his own hospital bed and taking a seat.

I guess since we’re inside, we’re no longer worth restraining. What would we possibly do to a group of larger mammals, mostly all predators, in their own territory? I notice that even from his place on the bed, Bruce keeps his black little eyes on me and rests his one hoof on the handle of his knife.

My ears pick up a scampering sound, much too lightweight to be any of the kitnappers. I look up just in time to see my father flying at me with tears in his eyes and a grim expression on his face. At first, I think he’s just going to hug me since we’re both free from the grips of our abductors.

But as I feel his weight force me against the ground and his claws pierce my chest, that warm feeling disappears entirely.

I lay there in disbelief for a second, trying to process what has happened. Both of his paws have their claws stuck through my shirt and into my skin. A warm, wet feeling starts to trickle down my side. He’s looking down at me with a furious fire in his eyes. Tears still stream down but I can’t focus on those as he looks into my eyes with just malice.

He chokes out a single sob before it turns into a roar of rage.

His arms slash down.

In an instant, my world becomes nothing but red and pain. My youthful skin gives away easily around his sharpened claws, leaving long gashes covering my body. I flail with all my remaining strength to push him away from me, but he doesn’t let me.

Again he slashes me. More blood starts flowing from the numerous new lacerations adorning what used to be my fluffy, white coat.

I realize that I’m screaming my heart out. The air in my lungs is quick to run out so I end up having to choke in new air constantly. My voice is already hoarse and broken.

My ears pick up the sounds of motion around me. My father doesn’t stop.

Again and again, he digs his claws into my pelt and rips new holes in me.

Some of the larger mammals are shouting now, but I can’t focus enough to make their words out. All I can see and hear is my father on top of me, the same mammal who had raised me and loved me for my whole life.

He’s the one who watched over me and made sure I was never hurt.

He’s the one I looked to for guidance when I didn’t know what to do.

He’s the one I respected more than any other mammal on the planet.

He’s the one with my blood and fur on his claws.

He’s the one crying more than I am.

The world fades away and it’s just the two of us, looking at each other. My whole body shudders as I try to stay awake through the searing pain. I can barely breathe anymore.

My eyes stare deeply into his and ask ‘why?’

His mismatched blue and yellow eyes, both flowing with warm tears, meet mine and answer ‘I’m so sorry.’

I can only blink in confusion as my blood exits my body.

“YOU LITTLE FUCK!”

A loud thump echoes in my ears as my father jolts forward. A sickening crack is heard at almost the exact same moment. I look up at my father, but he’s no longer looking back down at me. His eyes lose their focus and glaze over just as he slumps forward onto me.

All I can see is the side of his head. His cheek ends up resting right against my muzzle. I’m under his entire body weight now. I notice a new flow of red leaking down onto my nose. It’s followed by a second trail of crimson streaming down from his ear.

I am motionless as I stare at him.

He’s not moving.

He’s not breathing.

Above us, I see the blurred shape of Bruce lowering a bent length of pipe in his grip. A few droplets of blood fall down onto me and join the growing pool of warmth draining from me. There are more shouts around me now, and a new flurry of motion swirls around me.

I can’t hear them.

My focus is still on my dad. He still doesn’t move or take a breath.

“D...dad…?” I choke out with what air I still have in my lungs. The pain of my shredded chest is nothing compared to what I feel when he doesn’t answer.

A large blob of color moves into my vision and my father’s body is pulled from me.

All I can focus on is the look of sadness frozen on his face. Blood drips from his nose, mouth and ears but I can’t see him for anything other than my father. He’ll wake up at any moment and teach the rest of these animals a lesson. Then we can head home and see mom and Beth again. I wonder if Fru Fru will be free tonight?

As I lose consciousness for the final time today, I feel part of me die inside.

It dies with my father.


	7. Stitches

Awareness does not return to me in one piece.

Instead, one fragment comes back at a time. First, I feel a vague sense of light. No thoughts form about what the light might be coming from or why it’s directly above me. It’s warm, but it does little to heat the chilling tingle in my body.

My smell comes back next but it’s muted by something covering my nose. A stale but clean scent fills my rebooting consciousness. Every few moments, the scent becomes more humid and unpleasant but quickly dissipates. A strange sour smell tingles the back of my waking mind and sends periodic shockwaves of anxiety. Whatever the smell is, it stresses me greatly.

Soon after my smell, my hearing returns. I instinctively try to flick my ears to get a sense of the sounds around me, but my ears respond too sluggishly to decipher any of the surrounding mumblings. Everything that enters my head swirls together into an incomprehensible slur of words and movements.

My sight starts to function again but when I try to open my eyes, nothing happens. I can only ‘see’ in the sense that I can tell there’s a bright light on the other side of my eyelids. Every so often, something will move across the light and cast a shadow on me. These movements start to link up with the distant sounds my ears struggle to capture.

A dull ache coming from my center starts to spread, accompanied by a strange tightness, like my skin is being pulled every which way. The ache grows more and more into a full-blown pain as the sounds start to close in on me.

Or, I start to realize, my consciousness grows closer to the sound.

Something’s stabbing my chest. Every time I feel the pressure of something sharp enter me, it’s followed by a painful tugging that only makes the tightness grow worse.

It gets bad enough to cause me to let out an accidental grunt.

The sounds around me drop out for a few seconds. A shadow moves over my closed eyes and stays there, giving me a small break from the bright light.

“Shit, I think he’s waking up,” a voice finally registers in my head. I can’t tell who it belongs to.

“So? Just knock him out again. Better yet, let me,” another voice responds, this one more familiar and hostile. The rumbling voice causes a jolt of fear to shoot through me, followed by an emotional ache. I hate this voice and it needs to go away.

“No! Get! Just get back, you idiot!” The first voice is accompanied by a small commotion of movement as the two strangers interact above me. “Why are you even still here? Mina’s done, you can go home. You need to wash that blood off before you start drawing attention. And I think you got some fox piss on you. You smell like Brett.”

“Don’t bring up the skunk. He’s dead and gone, don’t want to remember him. God, I can still smell that asshole,” the bad voice says. With every word he says, I shrink further into whatever soft material I’m laying on. It crinkles lightly under my weight, causing the voices to go quiet again.

The painful tugging starts again but nothing else is said for a while. The lack of noise lets me stew in my foggy thoughts, my head feeling like a lone mammal trying to find and turn on all of the light switches in an unfamiliar house.

A deep ache in my gut forms completely separately from the skin on my chest. It’s not a physical pain; it’s like I’m forgetting something and my body is desperately trying to warn me that I’m going to remember it soon.

Something bad happened.

Where even am I?

A wet warmth presses itself against my chest, drawing a sharp gasp from me. My lungs take in more air than they have in a long time, almost making me cough. I manage to control my body and force it to peacefully deflate. Something tells me that the tightness in my chest would only get worse if I were to jerk around too suddenly. The warmth of whatever is pressing itself against me is oddly gentle and comforting. It might have to do with how cold my body still feels.

“So that’s lookin’ pretty good there. Should be fine, right?” the bad voice breaks the silence. It’s answered with an annoyed huff.

“For the hundredth time, NO. This is going to scar and there’s nothing I can do about it. The claws that did this didn’t slice, they tore. The skin can’t be neatly sealed back together like nothing happened. Sorry, but this one’s messed up for good,” the other voice explained. A chill runs up my body, a few flashes of memory beginning to pop up. My ears finally have enough feeling in them for me to lazily flick them more towards the direction of the conversing strangers.

“You’re a doctor! This should be easy for you! It’s just a few scratches, for fuck’s sake!” The bad voice is growing louder and more agitated by the second. I can feel the vibrations in the ground from someone stomping around in circles.

The warm, wet thing dabs against my chest again, relieving some of the searing pain.

“Stop that shit! You’ll make me damage something important and then you won’t even have the kit!” I hear the other voice right above me now, closer to my face.

“Good! Little piece of shit ruined everything! Should have just let him bleed out!”

“Oh, yeah, that would look great for you. All that blood the foxes took from you and nothing to show for it? Boss would love it.”

“Shut. Up. I got the kit like I was supposed to. Not my fault Lex let his guard down.”

“Yeah, sure. From what Connor told me, the only reason the father didn’t slaughter your whole group is because you had a knife to his son’s throat.”

“So? What, am I supposed to have an ‘honorable’ fight with the mammals I take?”

“You’re ‘supposed’ to keep control.”

“I HAD CONTROL!”

“Does THIS look like control?!”

My ears flatten themselves away from the roar of the argument going on above me. I can feel the spittle and heat being propelled out from the two yelling animals. As they continue to throw verbal jabs against each other, I can feel the warm thing press against me lightly.

I try to press myself back against it, hoping it can hide my away from the warring bodies. A soft coo comes from somewhere close to my ears and the warmth spreads again. The comforting touches are such a strange contrast to the fight happening only inches away.

“Y’know what? Fuck this, fuck you and fuck him. I’m out,” the bad voice finally declares. The trembling of the ground following his movements quickly falls away as he exits the immediate area. In the distance, I can hear some clunky machinery being opened and slammed shut.

“Fucking asshole…” the first voice mumbles. Without the anxiety caused by the presence of the bad voice, I let my body finally relax. As my muscles loosen from their stiffened state, a giant tremble travels from my ears to my paws.

Slowly, trying not to alert whoever is around me, I dare to open my eyes a bit. At first, all I see is a blinding light from a good distance over my head. It’s perfectly circular and seems to be swinging from side to side slightly.

The warm thing, the only thing to have brought me any sense of happiness that I can remember, presses into my chest against and dabs at it with care. I roll my eyes down towards where the sensation is coming from and see that the warmth was actually a wet rag this whole time. My eyes travel further up the arm of the mammal holding the rag. White paws meet white arms and those lead to a long, hunched over body leaning over my chest. A mink I think?

Her head turns in my direction as I look at her and our eyes meet. Her two glowing red orbs stare back at me, sending a spark of fear down my back. I quickly shut my eyes and pretend to be asleep again.

“Oh!” she squeaks. My body starts shaking again even though I try to suppress it.

“Hey, Doc, he’s awake,” I hear the mink woman say. A deeper sigh and movement sounds off to the other side of me and I dare to peek over. The oddly familiar form of a wolverine greets my vision. She’s not wearing the stained lounge clothes I had seen her in earlier, but her current clothing isn’t much better. The white medical coat looks more like a smock with how old and used it is. In the right setting, it would probably be confused for a painter’s gown.

She’s wearing a face mask over her muzzle, making her overall appearance a bit less intimidating to me. I still know how much she could be capable of, though. I’ve been around fights before where a wolverine was involved.

It was always messy.

“I see that,” I hear the wolverine grunt. I look up above the face mask to see that she’s also looking right at me. A yelp escapes my throat as I inhale sharply, causing a massive surge of pain to spread across my chest.

“Oop, careful! Hun, you’ll tear your stitches!” the mink objects, placing the warm rag on me and easing some of the pain. My ears flick towards her, trying to process her words.

Stitches?

I look down without thinking.

And…

Oh god. I’m...there’s...why?

What happened to me?

My entire chest is covered in ugly red lines going in all directions. Not only that, but all the fur on my chest is gone; shaved away so that the cuts in my flesh could be accessed by thread and needle.

The tight, painful sensation I have been feeling since I woke up is actually my skin being stretched by the stitches. My dark skin is covered in old, dried blood. I can’t stand to look at my body for more than a few seconds. This can’t be me. That mangled mess of stitching and raw, bloody skin can’t possibly be me.

I feel bile moving up my throat and turn my head forcefully to the side just in time to let it out. The wolverine and mink take a few steps back as I empty out what little substance my body still had in it. I hear the splash of puke hitting the floor a small distance away, so I must be on some elevated platform. Probably an old hospital bed of some kind.

The taste in my mouth isn’t really all that bad, considering I haven’t eaten in who knows how long. It’s just mostly a slightly acidic taste with no other flavor. Still doesn’t smell good, though.

“Bet that felt good,” I heard the mink’s voice from behind my head. Her little paws run themselves through the fur on the back of my head soothingly, encouraging me to let everything out. I jump at her first touch, not used to contact that doesn’t end with pain.

“Mina, quit it,” the wolverine warns. She seems to be off to the side packing her things away, judging from the sounds of clinking metal. I return my head to its original position, only this time my vision is filled with the softly smiling face of the mink. Her red eyes are definitely something to get used to; despite there being no malice in her posture, the bright crimson is hard to look at. All I see when I look into them is blood. I stare at her, unsure of what to do next. She maintains her small smile, her paws still brushing my head and ear.

“Mina!” the wolverine barks. The mink tears her gaze from me and scowls up at her partner.

“What?! What’s the problem?!” the mustelid fires back. They stare at each other, glowering, but the wolverine sighs and backs down first.

“Mina...you did this to the last one, too,” the larger of the two says, a hint of sadness evident in her voice. Mina glares at her, not willing to back down.

“Did what, exactly? Showed some kindness? Let them know that they’re not alone?” Mina demanded, her paws removing themselves from my head and landing firmly on her hips.

“You got attached. You know what happens here, Mina. God, please Mina, I can’t stand to see you bawling your eyes out every time some poor mammal gets pulled into this hell,” the wolverine says as she drags her large paws down her face. She looks both exhausted and frustrated, but there’s also a feeling of something else there.

Something painful.

“I don’t care. Look at him, Doc!” Mina gestures angrily down at me. “He can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen! Do you think he deserves this? ANY of this? Why can’t I get attached? He’s not even a full-grown tod yet! He’s...how old are you, kit?”

I blink sleepily up at her, not noticing for a few moments that I’ve been addressed directly and she expects an answer from me. When our eyes meet, my ears perk up and I try to get my mouth to form words. It’s quite difficult to do when I can’t take more than a small breath without my chest contracting painfully.

“I’m...I’m twelve…” I choke out, my voice rough and dry. The two stop arguing after I speak.

Mina’s eyes water over quickly and her paws reach up to cover her little muzzle. In contrast, the doctor adopts a furious snarl on her face that I can detect even through her face mask. The cheap bit of protective cloth can do little to hide those fearsome fangs.

“Oh, god…” Mina squeaks out before her emotions get the better of her. A loud wail escapes her throat and I’m suddenly wrapped in a sobbing white mink. She’s soft and warm on my face, and doesn’t smell bad, so I accept the contact.

“That...fucking...THE RULE IS NO CHILDREN!” the wolverine roars, rattling the equipment still set up around us. My ears slam down against my head and I recoil as far as I can away from the loud yelling. Her voice is nails in my head, a headache having formed from the lack of oxygen and recycled air being pumped into my lungs by my mask.

“Doc, oh god, Doc...that...his father…” Mina blubbers against my face, staining my cheek with her warm tears. The connection of her being the new wet rag is not lost on me, but her words tingle in my ears, triggering something painful to reappear in my head.

“My...dad?” I ask myself. A surge of emotions hits me like a truck, suddenly bringing back every bad moment to have happened to me in the past day or so. I watch it happen all again in my head, from the moment we stepped off the train to the moment I watched his...head…

I stop breathing as it hits me.

My dad is dead. 

He tried to kill me.

Then he died on top of me.

I sit up, ignoring the tearing of the fresh stitches in my chest. Doc tries to push me back down, but I don’t let her. A feeling of numbness washes over me as my emotions do their best to break my mind in half. My father’s death keeps looping around and hitting me again and again, each time sent hurtling back to the starting line by my denial.

He can’t be dead. I just saw him.

This is a nightmare. He can’t be dead.

Mom and Beth are waiting for us at home.

He can’t be dead.

None of this is real. This room doesn’t exist, these mammals watching me don’t exist.

That’s his blood on the floor next to me.

He’s dead.

My eyes lock onto the hastily mopped up red smear on the floor where I had once been laying under my father as he shredded me to pieces with his claws. Where he held me down and cut me open no matter how hard I begged him to stop.

Where that pipe swung from behind and cracked his skull open.

My emotions break through at once, shattering my illusions of safety to pieces. My father is dead and I’m alone with nothing but the scars left behind to remember him by.

I’m screaming now.

It’s not a cry or a shout of anger. It’s not one of fear or surprise.

I scream because my continued existence in this moment hurts me. Here, in the room, with these mammals, in this very second, I want nothing more than to disappear. I want to cease to exist. I want my world to go dark and for no light to ever stir my consciousness again.

I want to die.

Why do I have to continue to live while my father doesn’t? What am I going to do now? How will I ever face my mom? How will I ever look Beth in the eye again? Why did this have to happen to us? Why couldn’t we just have stayed at home in Tundratown and avoided all of this?  
It’s because of me.

I’m the reason we were in Savanna Central at all. If I hadn’t attacked that wolf boy over nothing and gotten myself expelled, we would have never had a reason to leave the safety of home today. We could be sitting at home, enjoying our weekend with some ice fishing or gone to see a movie at the Ice Box.

Instead, because I’m just another violent animal, I brought punishment upon my whole family.

I killed my father.

That thought is enough to send me over the line, and I soon realize that my body thrashing violently without me telling it to. I try to scream louder, but my voice is already gone and nothing comes out except for a raspy gurgle.

I feel paws trying to hold me down, but I struggle against them. I need to get away from here. I need to get somewhere, anywhere, as long as it’s not here. My father’s weight is still on my chest and I need to get it off. He’s holding me down and cutting me open all over again.

I need to get out!

Please, just let me go!

“HOLD FUCKIN’ STILL!” Doc’s voice breaks through the flashing storm of images and emotions running through my head. I feel a prick in my neck and the vortex of existential pain quickly goes numb. 

As does the rest of my body.

I fall back, or more accurately, am laid back against the bed. Doc’s strength shines through as she moves my body back into what should be a comfortable position. The light again shines into my eyes but it’s now more of a blur. The agonizing pain in my chest can no longer be felt. For the first time in days, a sense of true peace washes over me.

It’s a great feeling to have when all I’ve known lately has been anxiety and hurt.

I let out a relaxed sigh and settle my head back into the softness of the pillow. A small pair of paws find their way back to my ears and resume their rubbing. My eyes lazily glance up and meet the pretty red eyes of Mina. She has a look of such concern written on her face. Why does she look so upset? She’s quite a beautiful mink, all things considered. And she really knows how to go about massaging a pair of fox ears. Her little claws make contact as she rubs, but not nearly enough to do any kind of damage.

“God damn, we have to do some of these ALL over. Mina, get a fresh rag, he’s bleeding again,” Doc grumbles angrily. From out of my line of sight, I hear the same set of metallic tools being brought back out, but they make much more noise this time.

Uh oh, I think she’s angry.

“Sorry, ma’am,” I apologize softly, my voice barely a whisper. Mina removes herself from my head and scampers down off the bed to retrieve a new washcloth. I hear the sink running for a few seconds as she wets it down with that comforting warm water. Doc appears above me with a new mask and a conflicted look in her eye.

“Ugh...just...just stay still from now on, okay? Keep ripping the stitches like this and I won’t have anything to work with to get you back together again,” she says with a much softer, calming voice. She looks like she’s still pissed, but something is overriding that emotion. Her brows are furrowed but she’s not scowling anymore.

I nod up at her and lay back as flat as I can, not even feeling the pain as she goes to work repairing the broken seams. Mina is quick to join us with a newly warmed washcloth in her paws. I see now that the cloth is for dabbing away the blood that leaks out, not just for relieving the pain caused by the lacerations. The rag is quickly turned red, but I can’t bring myself to care. It’s almost fascinating to me, watching these two mammals work on my chest in such a practiced fashion. I feel like I’m watching someone else get stitched up, and the grisly chest being operated on isn’t really mine.

Mina gives me worried glances every so often, which I always respond to with a small smile. She always seems more worried when I smile at her for some reason. It’s hard not to smile at her when she’s been so nice to me so far. And I like her pretty red eyes, even when they look at me with such blatant concern.

Doc is stoic and focused as she works. Her eyes rarely move away from my chest, even when she reaches for a new thread to prepare. It’s quite impressive how she’s able to maneuver the needle and thread with her large claws so well. I doubt I could thread that needle with my claws even though they’re much smaller.

I don’t feel anything for the rest of her procedure. My chest looks less and less like a gory mess within an hour, and Mina’s attentive rag dabbing washes most of the blood away before it can dry. I’m soon looking down at a much less disturbing chest that I think might still belong to me.  
It’s not a pretty sight by any means, but it’s at least recognizable as a piece of someone’s body.

“There. That should do it,” Doc says under her breath. She turns her large brown muzzle to me and looks me straight in the eyes. “Don’t move around like that again, these need to start healing. You’ll probably spend the next few nights here so that your skin can mend somewhat, but after that…”

Mina turns up from her rag and gives Doc a pained look.

“No, you know what’s going to happen, Mina. The least we can do, if we’re going to bother helping him anyway, is get him mentally prepared for all this,” Doc says in a firm but oddly warm voice. I think she’s talking to both of us at this point so I flick my ears in her direction. I can continue counting the stitches later.

“Prepare...for what?” I ask tiredly. Whatever Doc stuck in my neck is making me more and more relaxed, beyond just the point of numb, emotionless peace. Now it’s starting to make me a bit sleepy. The pain is still absent, thankfully. Doc takes a deep breath, removes her mask and leans back in her chair. After a long and weary exhale, she speaks.

“Look, kid, I’m really sorry that this is happening to you. You’re way too young to be going through this right now, but you are. I’m not going to sugarcoat this because that would make things worse than if we didn’t say anything to you at all. You’re in a bad place run by a lot of bad mammals. It’s going to suck for you from now on and I can promise you that they’re going to make you do bad things. Most of us here don’t want to be here.”

“Where...where is ‘here’?” I ask softly, tilting my head a bit as I listen. Doc sniffs and looks away from me for a moment to gather herself.

“This is a fur farm, kid,” she spits.

“A what?” I don’t know what that is, but by the sound of it alone, I know it’s something to detest.

“This is a place where they take mammals and harvest them for their fur. Their skin. They breed, raise and slaughter animals here.”

Oh.

Even with the calming effect of whatever it was Doc injected me with, my heart beats faster as she explains it to me. This place isn’t just a ‘bad place,’ as she put it.

This place is actually Hell.

I’m in Hell.

“But,” she starts. I look back up at her with uncertain eyes, not sure I want to hear more. “They don’t kill everyone. Some of the mammals aren’t even here against their will. Some of them get stuck in gambling debt and are given the option to pay or to work for them for a while. There’s also a good amount of animals that they keep around for long periods of time so that they can be bred.”

“So you mean, they-”

“Yeah, they make them breed and have cubs. They take the cubs instead of the parents, for as long as the parents are able to make more cubs. Or they use you for the entertainment of the guests upstairs.” I tilt my head to the other side at those words.

“What’s upstairs?”

“The farm is hidden under a great big casino. We’re technically in the basement floors of the Taj Mamal. Ever hear of it?” she questions. I shake my head slowly so that I don’t give myself another headache. “Eh, that makes sense. You’re too young to be going to casinos, anyway. I mean, you SHOULD be too young, but...yeah…”

I can tell she’s starting to bum herself out. As stressing as this information is to hear, I can tell that I need to hear it. This is all really important to know if I’m ever going to find my way out of here and back home.

Home…

Home wouldn’t ever be the same again.

“Please…” I plead, trying to suppress the emotion trying its hardest to pull me back down into despair. “Tell me the rest. I have to know this. Please, ma’am.” Doc gives me an uncertain glance but wipes her face with her oversized paw to clear away any moisture that had started to gather.

Mina has found herself a place to rest on top of my head, leaning her top half over me like a pretty white hat. She pats my head supportively as I hear what is to become of my life from this point onward.

“Right, okay. Yeah, you need to know this, you’re right. So, here’s what’s important: you’re safe for now,” she says confidently, a stark contrast from her tone only moments ago. I blink and stare at her in confusion.

“Safe? How am I safe?” I gesture to my chest and then to the room around me.

“That chest of yours is actually the reason. You were probably brought in with intent to harvest right away since your coat is so clean. You might have been gone already if it hadn’t been for your father,” she says, a bittersweet smile spreading across her muzzle.

“My father...but...he tried to kill me…” I choke out, looking down at the mangled mess of skin that used to be my chest. Doc shakes her head quickly and scoots a bit closer to me, gaining an unnatural amount of energy.

“NO! No, he didn’t! Your father saved your life, kiddo! He knew exactly what he was doing! I could tell when I was patching you back up the first time. Your wounds there are barely deeper than the skin. He tore instead of sliced cleanly, which would have been much easier to heal! I swear to you right now, he did what he did because he knew it was the only way to buy you some time. I’m certain of it; he cut you up because he knew it would make your fur useless. You’re going to be covered in scars, kid, but that’s okay. Those scars are exactly why they won’t be harvesting you!” Doc speaks with such enthusiasm that I can barely tell it’s the same wolverine. She has a giddy look in her eye, like she has finally seen something work out for the best in front of her.

I can’t focus on her words as she continues. The world goes mute around me as a great truth tries to break through to my senses. This whole time, I was operating under the assumption that my father had tried to kill me for some reason. That particular reason hadn’t been worked out yet, but there had been a tingling in the back of my mind telling me that he had been furious that I had led both of us into a trap. I thought he just wanted to hurt me. I know it’s not anything my father would ever do, but I was in so much pain that the more painful thought made more sense.

Dad cut me up and died...to save me?

These wounds on my chest...they aren’t injuries at all, these are his last gifts.

He died to buy me time.

He loved me up until the end.

He didn’t hurt me.

He saved me.

Doc is still talking when she notices that I have tears streaming down my face. The chemical she injected into my system can’t do a thing against such a joyous revelation to me. I cry in relief and it’s such a weird feeling to have. I know my dad is dead and that fact alone keeps coming back around to hit me again and again. But knowing that he didn’t hate me is such a weight off my chest. Not only did he love me and give his life for mine, but he did so while fucking over the animals that took us.

My dad is a hero. My hero.

Mina thinks I’m crying sad tears again and tries to wrap herself around my neck to comfort me, but I quickly reach up and pull her into a sideways hug to avoid pressing her into my still slightly bloody chest. She squeaks at first but calms down when he feels my affection. I feel her tiny limbs reach as far as they can around me and let out a pained laugh.

Doc doesn’t seem to know what to think at first, but seeing me hug Mina earns a small smirk from the strict mammal. I even feel one of her large paws pat the top of my head and gently fiddle with my one ear. She is apparently amused by how fluffy it is and continues stroking the ear with her digits.

“You know what? You’re a little trooper. If any of us ever make it out of here, I hope you’re among them,” Doc says in the kindest voice I’ve heard come from her so far. I sniffle a little and the joy filling my body starts to fade. If I ever get out of here, it’s not like the pain will just end. My father is gone and always will be.

“I hope my sister and mother will be okay…” I whimper. Mina freezes and quickly reaches up with a tiny paw, pushing my muzzle shut. Doc becomes just as frigid at my words as Mina.

“Don’t mention them here, ever,” Doc demands with a claw pointed right at my muzzle. My breath catches in my throat at the sudden invasion of space. Her claw could probably tear my throat out with minimal effort if she wanted.

“Why?” I ask, fearing the answer.

“Because if they find out that you have family that will be looking for you, your mother and sister will become targets for them. They want to keep this whole operation quiet and it has been going for a long time now. They’re no strangers to silencing mammals that get too close to revealing them. So you and your father lived alone. You have no one else anymore, got it?” Doc stares straight into my eyes. Her deep brown eyes are fierce but I can tell they mean well.

I swallow down the lump in my throat but nod.

A loud metallic clunking noise suddenly comes from the same part of the room Bruce had disappeared down much earlier. All ears focus on the new source of noise. I don’t have any idea what to expect but Mina and Doc seem to know exactly what’s coming. They separate themselves from me and put themselves into positions that hint at them being uninterested in me at all. Mina goes to work washing out the bloodied rags and Doc restarts the tedious task of putting her tools away.

Neither of them look at me as the door to the room opens again and a tall figure steps through it.

Oh, wow.

That’s a tiger.

That’s a BIG tiger.

His orange and white fur covers every part of him that his clothes don’t. His attire reminds me of Bruce’s, but seems even older. Instead of looking like a full-on biker, this tiger reminds me more of a mechanic. His denim jeans are equally torn, but I can still see faint traces of long-dried blood on them.

His smell reaches me and I immediately recoil further into the bed.

He carries the stench of death with him.

The scent of blood, metallic and sour, fills the space around me as he approaches. His paws hit the ground with a steady pace, his weight shaking the bed under me. But his most intimidating feature, minus his sheer size, is his face.

Fangs stick up above his lip from his bottom jaw. His whiskers are either missing or bent. And the scariest thing about him is definitely his milky white eye, staring down at me but seeing nothing at all. His remaining yellow eye meets my gaze and suddenly he’s staring right into me. But he’s not looking at my soul.

He’s staring at what I look like under my skin. It’s obvious it doesn’t matter to him what I’m feeling or how much pain I’m in.

I’m just a product in his eye.

His tail hangs limp on the floor as he reaches my bedside and looks down at me. I freeze as I stare back up at him, unable to move an inch. My ears flick to each side as I pick up two sets of breaths being held from the mammals who had been comforting me minutes earlier.

His smell is overpowering from this distance. It feels almost like I stepped into a morgue. Except I’m laying in place and the morgue moved in around me.

His working eye takes in my pathetic state, his focus remaining heavily on the jagged stitching on my chest. He moves a paw up to my head and suddenly I’m afraid that I’m about to be snuffed out like a candle. His paw, roughly the size of my head with claws as big as my canines, moves against my cheek. Without any effort or resistance from me, he moves my head to the side, examining the back of my head and my ear. He turns my head to the other side and repeats the process.

“Hm,” he grunts, breaking the minutes-long silence. He removes his paw from me and places it back on his hip. His eye lingers on my chest again and narrows.

“Those will scar,” he states to himself. Doc doesn’t respond but turns her head to the massive feline as if she just noticed him standing there. He turns his head up towards the wolverine, allowing me to see his neck for the first time. A long, nasty-looking line of missing fur adorns the majority of his throat. It looks almost like the skin had been slit a long time ago and had never truly healed.

“Nothing else to be done?” he asks Doc directly. She meets his penetrating one-eyed glare and shakes her head. He nods and looks back down at me, taking in the sight of my furless mess of skin one more time.

“Can’t use him. I’ll tell the boss,” he states firmly before turning tail and walking back out. His paws echo even after he’s left the room and the door has been shut. The smell fades quickly but the chill he gave us all stays long after his departure.

Mina is the first to let out the breath she had been holding, followed shortly by Doc. I only take a breath when my world starts to dim and I realize that I too had forgotten to breathe. Being near that tiger was like staring straight up at death itself. He held no emotion, no uncertainty, he was just a robotic being of strength and authority.

“Good job, kid!” Doc says suddenly, her relief palpable. I flick my ears around, trying to get the feeling to return in my body.

“Good job...doing what?” I question.

“Well, uh...good job laying still, I guess. Most mammals I see try to bolt the first time they meet Felix,” Doc explains as she scratches at the back of her head.

“Felix…” I repeat. “Who is he?” Doc and Mina exchange glances but Mina nods her approval to continue. Doc takes another deep breath.

“Felix...he’s the butcher. When an animal is selected for harvesting, he’s the one that takes them and ‘processes’ them. That’s what that smell was,” she says with a slight tremble. It’s weird seeing such a fearsome mammal like Doc scared into submission.

A mammal having to kill other mammals and take their skins...why would anyone ever want to do that for a living? It just doesn’t make sense to me, especially with how much pain was hidden behind his stoic grimace. What if…

“Doc, is Felix here by choice?” I ask. Doc and Mina both turn to me and start to say something at the same time, but both of them can’t make any words. They look at each other with troubled expressions before turning back to me.

“You know, I think we kind of always just assumed so, but...we’ve never thought otherwise,” Mina says from her perch on the large metal sink.

“If he is, it sounds like he has the worst job here,” I ponder. The two medical mammals bite their lips, deep in thought, and nod along to my words.

“You hungry, kid?” Doc asks out of nowhere. I look up at her as she holds up that same box of cricket pasta she had been trying to eat when I had first arrived with my father. The thought of eating that doesn’t sit well with my stomach.

“Um, not that, but if you have an apple or something…” I answer. I expected my stomach to growl at the mention of food after not having eaten in so long, but it doesn’t seem to pick up on verbal signals and remains silent.

“Sure, I got one,” Mina pipes up as she launches herself from the sink and onto a rack of lockers. Woah, she’s quite the little acrobat.

“We’re going to get settled for the night and I bet you could use the rest, too, after two procedures. How does your chest feel?” Doc asks me as I watch Mina going through a locker much too high off the ground for a mammal her size. I look down at my chest and prod the aggravated flesh gently with a paw. A flare of pain hits me, though it’s still muted slightly from the medication.

Not only that, I can feel a nagging pit in my gut start to drag me back down into the depths of despair. The stress is coming back and the peaceful feeling is fleeting fast.

My heart rate is noticeably higher than before.

“Hurts,” I respond. “Can I have another shot of that stuff? Think I’m starting to freak out again.”

Doc narrows her eyes and turns to me.

“Kid, that wasn’t just medicine I gave you earlier, okay? That’s some really strong stuff and I don’t have much of it,” she states firmly. My body starts to panic at the prospect of having to deal with my capture, my mangled skin and dead father without the peace that the injection brought me. If I could just have some until my skin was healed enough to deal with my agonized tantrums, I would have one less thing to worry about.

“Please, Doc, I don’t know if I can sleep like this,” I beg, my ears lowered against my head. I try to give her the most pathetic look I can to maybe garner some sympathy and some more happy juice.

She crosses her arms and lifts a brow at me, her eyes seeing right through my begging. If she has been here for a while, I bet she’s seen all kinds of emotional manipulation from many different kinds of mammals.

My pout falls from my face and I look back down at my chest, trying to figure out how I’ll be able to convince myself to relax enough to go to sleep tonight. A steady throbbing can now be felt from every inch of skin that the stitches tug at.

I breathe deeper, trying to ignore the increasing pain. WIth every throb, the lights in the room blur slightly. I think I’m starting to see stars.

A small pain in my neck draws my attention away from my wounds. My eyes slide over and I see Doc in my peripheral vision, her paw holding a small syringe up to my neck. As her paw closes around it, I feel the same calming liquid flow into my body, numbing both the inner and outer pain almost entirely.

A dopey smile spreads out onto my face once the liquid takes full effect. I give Doc a loving stare and flick my ears at her. She scoffs and goes to put her stash back away wherever she had pulled it from.

A small apple plops onto the bed right next to me, luckily landing far away from my chest. I glance up and spot Mina just as she soars back down from her locker and onto the bed next to me.

She sees that I’m once again under the effects of the good stuff and frowns slightly.

“Hey, Doc, isn’t that stuff like...REALLY strong for a kit his size?” Mina inquires worriedly. From across the room, I hear Doc reply.

“Gave him a small dose, he should be fine. It should be just enough to get him to sleep. I’ll get him some proper painkillers in the morning.”

I try to pick up the apple, but find that my paws are numb as well and I fumble the fruit. Mina catches it and brings it back up to my muzzle. I lazily chomp into it, taking the tiny apple into my muzzle and chewing it slowly. Mina gives me a small smile before jumping down from my bed and back onto the floor. I can’t see her anymore from my position on the bed, but I can hear her small paws scampering on the tile floor as she moves around.

“Ready for bed, Mina? Got a lot to do tomorrow,” Doc calls over as she returns with some fresh blankets. Mina squeaks her confirmation from somewhere on the floor around my bed.

“You good, kit?” Doc asks me this time. I blink over at her, my head lolling onto its side.

“Adam,” I say to her.

“What?”

“My name. It’s Adam. Sorry if you didn’t want to know...just thought it would be easier than calling me ‘kit’ all the time,” I say with a yawn.

The room goes quiet for a few moments as the two mammals process what I’ve told them.

Mina speaks up first as she clambers into the same locker I saw her pull the apple from. Seems that little metal cabinet also serves as her bedroom.

“Night, Adam,” Mina calls, her locker door wide open and allowing me to see her. She looks cute, curled around a pillow like that. It actually does help me somewhat, being able to see her from my position in bed. I never like sleeping around others, but I can’t imagine being alone in a dark room right now. Not after everything that’s happened.

“Goodnight, Mina,” I answer her. She gives me another smile from inside her locker and settles in against her pillow.

The lights above me click off for the night, casting me into darkness. It’s not scary though, at least not while I’m juiced up with whatever Doc gave me. Whatever it is, I’m definitely going to be needing more of it if I’m going to get through this alive.

I close my eyes and find the lack of buzzing thoughts in my head rather soothing. It’s like the medicine is slowing my consciousness down so that I can only really focus on what’s going on around me. And with such a comfy bed to lay on, with mammals I already trust still in the surrounding room, I can actually relax.

The world fades away from me rather quickly, but my ears tingle one last time with what I can barely identify as Doc’s voice.

“Peaceful dreams, Adam…”


	8. The New Kit

Days pass by without much to note.

That might be because while I’m under the effects of the actual painkillers, I’m so conked out of my gourd that I can’t really process what’s happening around me. Everything feels like a foggy dream. I vaguely recall some lights and colors, but they quickly fade away before I can focus on them. Sounds blur in my head and become nothing more than white noise in an ocean of static thoughts.

The best part is that I can’t even think about where I am during all of this.

I can’t dream, I can’t think, I can’t feel anything.

Given my location and situation, I can ask for nothing better while I heal. I do notice a bit, while half-asleep, that the tightness in my chest is slowly fading away. My usual sleepy movements are less restrained by the fourth day and I can even move my arms around freely without something forcing them back down.

Every so often, when it’s dark and there’s no light or sound around me, I can just barely feel a section of my neck get warmer. It’s not an uncomfortable sensation at all and the scent coming from the warm object is relaxing to me.

Even in my drugged haze, the smell brings up a feeling of familiarity and care.

It’s always gone when the lights turn back on, though, to my disappointment. The scent never entirely goes away though, surrounding me at various times of the day in different levels of potency.

It seems like a week or so has passed when I finally gain my senses.

The lights turn on as they always do, but I’m suddenly more alert about how blinding they are. I turn my head to the side and let out a tired groan, letting my mind boot up for real for the first time in a good while. Lifting my head proves difficult and a quick sniff determines why; I have a white mink scarf snoozing comfortably around my neck. Despite my lack of complete clarity, I remember enough to know that it’s just Mina using me as a heated pillow. A scoff escapes my throat, but it turns into a cough. Apparently trying to laugh after not using your voice or clearing your throat for a week can cause some dryness.

My sudden motion and barrage of sounds wakes Mina, who startles into consciousness and bolts off the bed instinctively. I hear a crash coming from the area where she lands, followed by the sound of falling boxes. Heavy steps approach my bedside and I turn to see Doc jogging over to me, her dark brown fur a bit messy from sleeping weird on it.

“The hell was that?” she asks through a yawn as she arrives at my bedside. I finish clearing my throat and moistening my mouth before gesturing my muzzle a few times in Mina’s direction. The mink apparently sees this as her signal to tear around the corner of my bed on all fours, a plastic bag wrapped around her head. She bolts from side to side, all the while screaming like she’s being murdered. Doc stumbles and tries to catch her to remove the offending piece of garbage, but Mina is having none of that.

I’m treated to at least five full minutes of Doc chasing the panicking mustelid around the room, bumping into random objects and knocking over shelves as they go. My still-sleepy brain can think of no better response than to just lay there with my jaw hanging low.

Am I actually awake?

Is this real?

Why is there a cartoon going on in front of me?

Finally, Doc’s claws manage to pinch the scruff of Mina’s neck. The smaller mammal is hoisted easily into the air, where her tiny little legs continue to scamper as if there was still a floor under them. Doc, panting heavily and even more exhausted than she had been, rips the plastic bag away from her friend’s face in one smooth motion.

The mink’s ruby red eyes spring open and she shrieks at Doc in an ear-piercingly high voice. I would have thought that Doc would laugh at or scold her for the silly series of shenanigans, but Doc takes in her friend’s appearance with surprising seriousness. Mina doesn’t look so good; her chest is heaving as she hyperventilates and her eyes, even while open, dart every which way, looking for an escape route. Doc tries to bring her in closer for a hug but with whatever state Mina is suddenly in, she doesn’t let her friend get any closer. She snarls and swipes at Doc’s arm, trying to free herself.

“Mina! Calm down, Mina! It’s just m-OUCH!” Doc tries to sooth her, but gets a tiny mink claw in the paw for her efforts. It’s just enough of a scratch to draw a pinprick of blood from the wolverine. That means that the scratch would have done way worse on my skin if it was me she was freaking out at.

She’s having a panic attack of some sort. Doc looks lost on what to do, choosing to just hold her away from her body so that she doesn’t get any more injuries. I look at the two, trying to think of anything to do to help.

Mina is panicking.

She doesn’t want to be held.

What would I want to do if I was in her situation?

It’s hard to say, as it seems like a more personal response. But I know that when I get overwhelmed at home, I build a den made out of pillows and blankets to hide in. The dark seclusion of the makeshift fort always calms me greatly.

Maybe something like that could help Mina?

I look down at the blanket covering my body, quite a new addition to my sleeping arrangement, and try to think of a way to make some sort of den out of it. I don't really have any structures like my bed at home to hang the blanket from. I guess my body will have to do.

“Doc, put her on my bed!” I say in as loud of a voice as I can muster. I pin the sides of the blanket down with my legs and use my arm to form a little hole for her to enter through. The inside of the fake blanket den is mostly just the space next to me, but it should be dark and warm enough.

Doc looks over, her face still locked in concern. She seems unwilling at first to throw a raging ball of claws and teeth at a much younger, more vulnerable creature, but gets over her reservations the moment Mina manages to wrap herself in half to get in a good kick.

The wolverine waddles over quickly and lowers the mink to the bed next to me, right next to where I have the blanket raised. As soon as Mina’s feet touch the bed, Doc lets go of her neck and retreats. As expected, Mina ducks into the blanket fort and I feel her body bump into mine. It suddenly occurs to me that I just trapped a violent mammal right against the part of my body that had been sliced open only a week ago and is very much still healing. To our relief, however, I don’t feel any claws or teeth pierce my skin. I feel Mina pressed against me, her body still rapidly shaking with her panicked breaths.

But she stays there, in the darkness under the blanket. She doesn’t run anymore and she doesn’t attack. I can feel her against my side, right next to where the stitches start. Doc looks on worriedly, but deflates in relief when she sees that I’m not being cut open all over again.

Over the course of a few minutes, Mina’s breathing slows back down to a normal rate. I’m even brave enough to lower my paw to her body to give her a soft brushing. She lets me massage her back, just as she had massaged my head during my panic attack. I can feel how bristled her fur is with my paws and do my best to smooth her coat back down. It pains me to feel how fast her heart is still beating, but at least she’s not semi-rabid anymore.

Eventually, she starts moving again. She’s no longer under the influence of her panic. I am able to recognize the same pretty red eyes I’ve come to like so well as she peeks her muzzle back out of the blanket fort. Her muzzle is stained with tears and her eyes still move around cautiously, just in case the danger is still present.

“I’m...I’m okay…” she mutters so quietly I can barely hear her. Doc places a large paw over her chest and lets out a relieved exhale. I haven’t even known Mina that long and even I’m ecstatic to see her back to her normal self. I don’t ever want to see someone as nice as her have to go through that again. What even was all that?

Mina’s eyes lock onto the slight drip of blood coming from Doc’s paws and her eyes widen in horror.

“Oh, no! I’m sorry! I’m so so sorry! I didn’t mean-!” Mina starts to work herself back up into a frenzy out of guilt, but Doc is quick to shush her.

“Mina! Mina, it’s fine! It’s just a tiny scratch! Don’t worry about it, seriously. I’m more worried about you. What was that?” Doc asks in a soothing voice. Mina buries her face into the bed and lets out a trembling sigh.

“I...I don’t know...that’s never happened to me before...I was having a nightmare about the night I got taken, and...I woke up under the blankets,” Mina explains. Doc bites her lip as she listens, very visibly concerned for her friend. I look over to the shredded piece of plastic resting on the ground where Doc had picked her up.

“The bag,” I say out loud. Doc and Mina turn their heads to where I’m looking and they make the connection at the same time. Mina shivers and moves back under the blankets, her butt pressing up against my side again. Doc turns back to the mink with a knowing, sympathetic look.

“Oh, Mina, I’m sorry…” the wolverine coos as she gets closer to the blanket den. “Is that how they got you? They just shoved you into a bag?”

From under the blanket, I can hear Mina sniffling.

“...Yes…” she mumbles. My heart goes out for the little mammal. She’s such a loving creature in such a bad place. She doesn’t deserve to be here. I bet Doc doesn’t deserve to be here. I might be the only one in the room who actually did something worthy of this torment.

“Fuckers…” Doc growls. I share her sentiment. It’s getting more and more clear to me that I might not be able to escape by myself if I ever get the chance. I can’t just leave mammals like these to their fates at the hands of such monsters. No, if I am ever to leave this Hell, it’s going to be with every other animal in captivity. Doc, Mina, whoever else is stuck here; they’re all leaving with me.

Maybe I can actually help in some way, some day.

“Thanks, Adam…” Mina says, drawing my attention away from my future plans. I look down and see her staring back up at me with those big red eyes, but at least they aren’t crying anymore. She has a small, sad smile on her muzzle even though her face is still wet from her tears. I tilt my head to the side, confused as to what was worthy of thanks.

“Yeah, kid. Nice thinking there with the blankets and all. How did you know that would calm her down?” Doc asks as she starts cleaning up the mess she had made trying to grab Mina. The mink in question also looks up to me, curiously awaiting my answer.

“I, uh...that’s just kinda what I do when I need to calm down. Works better with a few chairs, maybe some couch cushions, but anywhere secluded and dark usually works,” I explain bashfully, not used to being in the spotlight over something good I did. Doc smiles at me, a true sight to see with all those wicked teeth, and Mina finally manages to work her way completely out of the hideaway.

She walks her way quietly up to my face and before I can process her closeness, plants a tiny kiss on my nose.

“Well, thank you. You made me feel very safe. You’re warm, by the way,” she says, smiling at me honestly. I have a hard time responding to her, focusing instead on how warm my ears have gotten all of a sudden. I give her a shy nod and look up at the ceiling. A tiny giggle escapes the mink and she jumps back off the bed to help Doc clean up the mess.

“By the way, kid,” Doc pipes up from somewhere near a toppled cabinet. “You should probably not refer to yourself as your real name. It’s too easy for them to find your family if they just have to search up any recent missing mammal reports filed for your name.”

The fur on the back of my neck sticks straight up at the thought of them getting their paws on my mom or sister. They already took my father from me and I will NOT let them hurt the rest of my family.

“So what should I go by?” I ask, already feeling like the last shred of my identity is about to be peeled away and replaced with something strange. Doc stomps over to me and looks me over for a few seconds. I can proactively smell the gears working in her head, though I wouldn’t ever tell her that, for fear of her taking her stitches back.

“You’re an arctic fox with a nice fresh winter coat. Can’t be calling you Snowball…” Doc ponders. I hear the name and my mind flashes back to the run-in with Nick. I wonder if he knows by now what happened to me and my father…

“Blizzard?” Mina offers. Docs shakes her head and keeps thinking.

“Colder? Chilly? Uhh...Snowflake?”

As the two blurt out worse and worse names for me, I let my mind wander back to a time when I was little. It’s my favorite memory of my family being together; the day when we went ice fishing for the first time along the banks of Icy Lake. I’d never been on an iced over lake before and the fact I was walking on top of the water blew my mind. My sister was still a bit young to process how cool it was, but I had such a blast. I even fell through the ice at one point and I had to listen to my parents freaking out. But I found quickly that I loved to swim, and the cold water was so refreshing to me that I stayed in for most of the day. My father even jumped in for a while to join me, showing me how to properly position my body in the water. He had called me his ‘Little Winter.’ Beth and Mom watched us from the ice shore, waving whenever we looked over to her. Afterwards, when we had caught a few fish the traditional way, we went over to the Big House to have dinner with the Bigs. Even back then, Fru Fru chose me to crawl on over any of the other kits at the table. This unexpected bond between us perplexed my father and Mr. Big at first, but it led to an even closer connection between our families as a whole. I didn’t know it back then, but that day cemented a lot of constants in my life to come.

I notice after a few minutes of reminiscing that Doc and Mina had stopped spitting out names. They watch me with a sad look in their eyes, Mina holding a paw over her heart.

It becomes apparent to me that I had been softly crying. But I can still feel the smile on my face. Those happy memories must have carried me away from my current situation and left me oblivious to the world around me.

“Winter,” I say confidently. The other two mammals blink and let the name sink in. It doesn’t matter what they think of it at this point; it’s what my father called me and I’m keeping it.

My doubt in their approval is short lived, as they both nod their heads at the same time.

“Winter what? Are you going to use a last name?” Doc asks.

“Umm...how about ‘Alabaster?’ That’s like a white color, right?” Mina throws out. That sounds as good as anything else I can come up with, so I nod my head to her and she returns it with a bright grin.

Winter Alabaster.

It’s not the best name, but it should keep them off my family’s trail for a good long time. Just as long as they don’t find anything about who my father is, I should be okay.

Wait.

He had his wallet on him.

“Hey hey! Doc, what did they do with my father’s possessions?!” I demand urgently, trying to sit myself up out of panic. The flesh on my chest stretches uncomfortably, but the stitches and new skin hold strong. Doc and Mina are a bit startled by my sudden surge of movement and they struggle to form the thoughts needed to answer me.

“H-he, uh...we...his clothes...we took them off before they...dragged him away…” Doc struggles hard to word her response in a way that won’t upset me. But I’m not worried about that right now. I know my father is dead and I feel a painful pit in my gut telling me that they probably already used his body for their own purposes.

He’s gone. I can’t do anything about that.

But the rest of my family is still alive.

I have to keep them that way!

“Do you still have them?!” I inquire again. Doc’s eyes widen at my words but she nods anyway and goes to a locker on the side of the room, one that hadn’t been knocked over. She fumbles with the lock but has it open in moments.

She returns with the pile of ruined clothing and holds it to me.

I thought I was ready to see his clothes again.

I was wrong.

I almost swallow my tongue as I see the familiar outfit. They’re still covered in blood, now brown and dried. But the clothes still carry his familiar scent. My eyes water against my will and I have to look away for a moment to recollect myself. My knuckle finds its way into my mouth and I bite down hard to try to focus some pain away from my core. Anything to distract myself from the last garments he ever got to wear before that swine struck him down.

Doc’s giant paw places itself firmly on my shoulder. Mina’s body joins the huddle moments later, her familiar warmth and smell somewhat overriding the scent of my father.

I try so hard not to cry.

My body trembles with effort as I use all my strength to stifle my storming emotions.

All of my strength isn’t nearly enough.

So I cry.

It’s not the painful wail or the tormented screams from the last time my emotions took control of me. I’m not flailing around and ripping my stitches all over again. My body shakes as I sob, but my movements are muted against the bodies of both Doc and Mina leaning against me.

This is the cry I’ve been needing to let out for the last week.

I’ve known my father is dead and tried to convince myself that I was okay enough to deal with the new situation.

That was just me lying to myself. The whole time, the impact of my father’s death hadn’t truly passed through me. It had just been poking at the cracks in my mask, waiting for me to let it in and truly embrace the facts.

Embrace the sadness.

Embrace the guilt.

Embrace the idea of living the rest of my life without my father there to watch over me.

And above all, embrace the facts of my dire situation so that I can truly begin to work out a plan to get out of it. My father did his best and in his last moments, gave me a chance.

I’m not going to waste it.

For me, for my father, for my family and for every mammal who has ever fallen victim to these evil creatures, I will make it out of here.

And I’m taking the rest of the captives with me.

My sobs quiet down after an unknown amount of time. I have no idea how long I sat there crying, but I know it has been long enough for both Doc and Mina to have changed positions at my bed multiple times. Doc’s shoulder is stained wet with my tears, but she doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. Mina takes the opportunity to rub some antiseptic cream on my chest, which is surprisingly cool and soothing. The cream must also be a moisturizer of some sort, as the tightness in my dry skin fades quickly.

“Woo. Okay. I’m good, thanks guys,” I murmur after wiping away the tears staining my muzzle. My two friends give me reassuring rubs on my shoulders as I turn back to my father’s clothing.

The pile of bloodied, torn fabric isn’t the same as it was. Instead of stirring up unimaginable misery, the sight now sets a fire in me that burns to the surface and threatens to consume me.

I’ll make them pay. For every animal they hurt.

This place will burn.

I’ll burn Hell to the ground.

I reach forward and make contact with his clothes, not sure what to expect. But they’re just clothes and nothing jumps out to bite me. I quickly get to work fumbling through his stuff, looking for his pants pockets. As I mess with the garments, something small and round falls out and lands on my lap.

My father’s stone.

The stone he liked to use for that weird metaphor of his.

My father had fallen with the stone in his pocket.

Yet here it is on my lap.

In some sort of cosmic way, the stone had returned to the surface. It had bounced. A wide smile breaks out onto my face and I take the small rock in my paws and hold it close to my chest.

Doc and Mina give me curious glances but don’t say anything to break me out of my thoughts. I don’t hug the stone for very long, though, as it isn’t my target. I resume looking through the pockets and shortly after find what I’m looking for.

I pull the wallet out of his rear pocket, doing my best to avoid touching the dried blood. Doc’s eyes widen when she sees what I have retrieved. With a flick of my wrist, I flip the wallet open and spill out all the contents inside.

It’s all here.

Identification card with address, age, full name, the works.

Pictures of us mostly, though a few of them include him.

A wad of cash that seems very excessive for just having been meant for funds for a single day.

Also, some sort of strange black card with a fancy looking letter ‘B’ printed on it. The card has nothing written on it besides for the letter but the card itself is very sturdy and finely built. It feels like some sort of metal.

“Here, can you hide or destroy these?” I ask, handing her his ID and pictures. Doc nods and takes the small stack of items. I don’t watch what she does with them; it hurts me to get rid of the last bits of my father I have access to, but it’s for the sake of the rest of my family.

I decide to pocket the stone, card and cash. Nothing on them can be used to identify who I am or who my father was.

My new life as Winter Alabaster starts now.

Adam Brisk dies with his father, Alexander.

I don’t feel any different, but I know that I’ll have to force myself to remember my new self.

Mina remains by my side as this all happens, choosing to pat my ear again. I lightly lean into her, trying to move her paw to an area on my head where an itch has developed. She obliges my silent requests and scratches where I position my head to.

All ears in the room flick to the sudden sound of approaching steps. Mina bolts off of my bed again and helps Doc. The two hurry around the room, trying in vain to pick everything up before the new arrivals can reach the door.

They get about half of the room sorted by the time the heavy door creaks open.

“...The hell happened in here?” a strange, gruff voice spits. This is someone new, and I already don’t like the tone of their voice. The stranger’s identity is immediately apparent to Doc and Mina, who both straighten up and turn to meet him.

I hear the sound of cloven feet walk through the doorway and finally I can see who this new mammal is. He’s a pig, but not like Bruce. This aging pig is a good bit shorter, fatter and has much neater clothing on. His loose tan slacks are held up by suspenders wrapped around his shoulders. His top half is covered in a simple beige button-up shirt and a tie much too short for his thick neck hangs undone.

He looks like the pig who tried to sell my father a junked car a few years back.

But the effect he has on my two friends is disturbing.

“Sorry, sir, just a bit of a scuffle,” Doc says as her eyes stare straight through him. The pig snorts and crosses his arms. He appears to be smoking some kind of cigar, as evident by the cloud of smoke he exhales straight into Doc’s face. Her eyes squint but she doesn’t move away from her spot on the tile.

“Yeah, from what I hear, some little runt has been giving my fetchers the runaround. Promised them I’d have his hide in the catalogue by this Friday, but then I hear that his pelt got scarred up pretty good?” He snorts again and walks further into the room. He waves behind his back, apparently to someone standing just outside the door.

Behind him emerges the last figure I wanted to see enter the room.

Felix.

My eyes widen and my blood runs cold as I see the giant tiger again. Mina can’t hold back the gasp as she notices Felix towering above her. Doc’s doesn’t move, but I notice that her eyes widen into an icy stare. I can already hear Mina’s body starting to shake.

The pig waddles his fat body over straight to where I’m laying. It’s too late to pretend I’m asleep; he saw me the moment he walked in. I was still resting on my elbows and have been very visibly awake this whole time.

He moves closer and closer, carrying with him the smell of cigar smoke and whiskey. The ground shakes a bit as Felix follows, his large paws almost cracking the tile from his weight alone. The tiger looks just like the last time I saw him, still maintaining that emotionless gaze that had burned its way into my mind. His jacket is the same, but his shirt and pants are different. Despite the wardrobe difference, he smells just as bad as I remember.

“So,” the pig spits at me, his head level with my body. “You’re the welp that tore out Lex’s eye and scarred up Bruce.”

I want to say something, but he doesn’t let me. He probably doesn’t care what I would have to say anyway.

“Or, wait, am I getting that wrong? Was that your father? Ah well, doesn’t really matter, I guess. Beautiful pelt from that one either way, I tell ya. Shame we couldn’t have kept him as a breeder. He had quite the potent seed if he was able to make something as pretty as you. But things happened the way they did and now I’m stuck with you. It’s not all bad though!” He offers such a fake encouraging smile that I feel my stomach trying to force up whatever liquids they had been force feeding me while I was under the painkillers.

“His pelt was already sold at auction for three times the usual arctic fox value! Isn’t that great?” The pig slaps me on the back and I have to choke back a yelp. Everything fiber of my being is screaming out at me to do exactly to this pig what I had done to the last one. My vision starts to turn red again as his words dig deeper and deeper under my skin, but I notice Felix staring down at me. His remaining yellow eye pierces right through me, warning me not to make any sudden movements.

Even if I tried to attack, I know I wouldn’t get a few inches towards the pig before Felix’s claws would find my throat.

I instead settle for giving the pig my nastiest glare. He laughs out loud and blows a ring of smoke into my face. The smell enters my system and is able to barely overpower the smell of death radiating from Felix. I don’t know which one is worse.

“Don’t you look at me like that, you little shit. You’re still my property, after all. They took ya fair and square, and I’m going to get some use out of ya, scars or no,” he growls. My heart drops in my chest and my fur stiffens up, giving me a poofy appearance.

Holy shit.

They’re still going to use me.

He doesn’t give a shit about the scars.

I’m going to die.

The loud ringing in my ears returns, making it hard to hear the sounds of Mina struggling against Doc’s grip. I look over with wide, terrified eyes at the little mink just to see her fighting to get to me. The wolverine holding her back stares at the air in front of her face, not daring to look up at me. The pig and Felix ignore the obvious sounds of Mina freaking out and instead keep their focus solely on me. I notice that they both seem to be having a silent discussion with each other, both gesturing to my chest.

My body shakes violently as my impending death starts to hit me.

This is actually happening.

There’s no more painkillers in my system so I’m definitely not imagining this. It’s not just a bad nightmare either, the ache in my chest is all too real.

The two mammals standing next to my bed finish their conversation and straighten themselves up. Felix has a grim expression adorning his features and it’s enough to shut my body down. I want to fight, I want to struggle so badly.

But I can’t. I’m just a tiny fox facing up against a much heavier pig and a much, much larger tiger. Not to mention I’m still injured and haven’t used my muscles in a week.

I don’t even move when Felix reaches over me, grips me with his oversized paws and lifts me effortlessly out of the bed. It feels like I’m floating over myself, watching as I’m carried away to who knows where. My arms, legs and tail dangle uselessly from my body and my eyes stare at nothing at all around me.

Felix carries me under one of his muscular arms, overwhelming my senses with his deathly stench. I see the pig walking in front of us as we exit the room.

The sounds of Mina wailing in agony meet my ears and I turn my head weakly to give her one last look. Doc is embracing her, trying to sooth the inconsolable mink. It breaks my heart to hear her cry out in so much pain. Doc’s heartbroken stare is what finally sends me over the edge though, and my mind snaps.

All feeling escapes me and I’m back to floating above my own body, watching down as I’m carried to my death. I get one last look at the only two mammals in this place I’ve come to know as friends.

Numb to the sadness, I wonder to myself how many times Doc and Mina have had to go through this same scenario; watching a mammal they’ve come to know pretty closely taken away from them to their doom.

The next time I see Mina, I’ll have to apologize for letting her get so close to me just to let myself get killed. Oh, and I’ll have to say sorry to Doc too for doing exactly the thing she had been trying to prevent. She knew that Mina would hurt if she got attached. Not only did I let Mina get hurt, but even worse, I got just as close to the burly wolverine woman. I hurt both of them equally and it’s just one last thing to add to the list of things I’ve done wrong in my life.

The door closes, silencing Mina’s sobs from me. My ears flick lazily around, but I’m not really in control of them anymore. I’m content to just float along behind my body, taking in the change in decor as we move further into the farm.

Is this what a hotel outside of Tundratown looks like? There are numerous rooms that we pass, all numbered with strange symbols that I’m not familiar with. The walls are covered in red zigzag patterns, but sections are starting to peel away from age. There is actual carpet under Felix’s feet. I’m not used to carpet, as it’s not something that holds up in Tundratown residences. Constantly getting wet and then freezing ruins all kinds of materials, so most homes stick to either treated hardwood or marble floors.

The pig grunts as we walk, letting me know that he’s not in that great of shape. But his round profile makes that obvious enough. Felix, however, barely makes any noise at all, even to breathe. The only sounds that make it obvious that he’s coming actually arise from the ground itself. The boards under the carpet creak and groan under his massive weight.

I already miss Doc and Mina. They’re good mammals and deserve so much better than this.

I hope they eventually find a way out of here once I’m gone.

We stop. 

Why do we stop?

I feel my consciousness start to drain back into my actual body and my awareness returns. I’m still held far above the ground, the pig is still wheezing and Felix still stinks. My ears flick towards the sounds of wood being struck by a hoof.

Looking up, I see that we’ve stopped in front of a door with another weird symbol on it. The pig knocks again, louder this time. He huffs impatiently, but my ears pick up the sounds of movement coming from behind the door. After a few more moments, the door clicks open and I see a greyish muzzle poking out from the crack.

“B-boss…?” I hear the muzzle stutter.

“Hey, mind coming out here for a moment? Got someone I want you to meet,” the Boss replies, his tone light and casual. The door opens wider and I’m a bit surprised at what walks out.

It’s another arctic fox. This one is sporting a deep summer coat, though. He looks even older than my father was and is a good bit heavier. He’s dressed in just a set of old sweatpants but wears nothing on his top. Around his neck is a weird black collar-looking device that has a large black box on the side of it. I tilt my head as I try to take in this new stranger.

“W-...what’s up…?” he asks nervously, scratching at his cheek. He doesn’t seem to notice Felix standing behind him with me in his arms. His attention is focused entirely on the pig standing in front of him.

“Oh, just a new arrival is all,” the pig says with a practiced grin. “Need a room for him, you see.”

The fox’s ears shoot back behind his head and he spins around, finally noticing the giant tiger standing behind him. His pupils shrink to pinpricks and his tail poofs out.

Then he spots me, the tiny little white-furred kit being held in the arms of the much-larger feline. Something connects in his head and he seems to know exactly what’s coming next. I’m at a loss, though. Everything happening in front of me is happening for the first time.

“No. No no no no no NO!” the fox yells out, turning back to the pig and getting closer. Boss takes a step back and reaches into his pocket for something.

“I’m still fertile! I never failed to give you kits!” the grey-coated fox pleads. “I did everything you wanted! What did I do wrong?!”

The pig lifts a brow and stares back at the fox. “Hey, now, I didn’t say you didn’t do your job. You gave us a lot of good, beautiful pelts. And even though you’re a bit fat for a fox, you had some loyal repeat customers as well. See, this isn’t about you. I just came into a younger, much prettier fox and well, shit...I don’t really need more than one to knock up the vixens, now do I?”

I feel sick to my stomach listening to this. It’s becoming obvious to me that I’m sitting through this poor fox having to beg for his life.

“B-b-but what about Bruce?! We had a deal! As long as he does his job, I get to stay a breeder!” the fox is crying now. His pleas for mercy fall upon the floppy, deaf ears of the pig.

“Yeah, now, see...Bruce is actually part of the reason I’m making this decision. We had a deal, yes. And that’s why I’m here at your room. Bruce fucked up. This little kit here? This one was supposed to be nothing more than a quick white coat. But thanks to Bruce, they brought the father along during the snatch and let him shred the shit out of his kid’s skin. Useless to me, now, you know. So if you want to blame someone for my decision today, blame your hubby.”

The fox stands frozen in place for a good minute, his mouth trying to form words; anything he could say to save his own life. But without anything good to retort with, he can’t fight back against the inevitable.

Or so I think.

Before I can process his movement, the fox is flying at me with a wild look in his eyes. His jaws open wide and his claws expand out towards me, intent on ending my life as quickly as possible. I don’t know if he forgot about Felix standing there or simply doesn’t care.

But Felix doesn’t have to touch him.

The fox simply drops out of the air and lands in a heap on the carpet. I try to figure out what stopped him, but the answer arrives immediately in the sound of electricity. The fox flails wildly on the group, letting out a desperate shriek that echoes down the wooden hallways. There’s a blinking red light on his collar that had been a constant green only seconds ago.

Oh god, that’s an electric collar. But what…?

Boss pulls a black button out of his pocket and sighs tiredly.

“Every fucking time,” he groans and rubs his eyes with his hooves. On the ground, the fox’s body still convulses with what must be massive amounts of electricity shooting through it. I want to close my eyes but I’m transfixed.

A short while after the fox has stopped screaming, Boss lets his hoof off the button and the collar turns green again. The fox’s body goes still and he shows no signs of life from this point on.

Did...did I just watch this poor fox die?

My jaw drops open as I take in the sight of the roasted fox. There’s even a burnt smell that wafts up from his prone body. The scent enters my head and refuses to leave. Felix remains completely still, not having reacted to the event at all.

It’s probably routine for him.

“Felix, drop the kit off. You got a new pelt to prepare,” Boss says without any regard for the fact that he just killed someone. “Oh, and use the same collar. Should still work just fine.”

I almost choke in Felix’s grasp as I hear this. That collar is going onto me! The same tool that I just saw end another mammal in one of the most painful ways I can imagine is going on me next.

But...does that mean...I’m not dying right now? Why would he put a collar on me if they were just going to kill me?

No, I don’t think I’m dying today. But I think that poor tod just took my spot.

I don’t know how to feel about this.

Felix doesn’t wait to give me time to process any of this. After clicking the still-smoldering collar around my neck, he simply stomps forward into the room with me in his arm. I look around and suddenly feel very out of place. This is someone else’s room with someone else’s objects laying all over.

But the room’s owner just perished outside the door.

There’s even a cup of what smells like coffee on the table.

The room itself looks like any other basic hotel room, just with an apartment’s worth of furniture crammed in. There’s a messy bed, a table and two chairs, a fridge in the corner and even a television mounted on the wall. I even spy a door on the far wall that’s slightly open, letting me see into the tiny bathroom. The light and fan is still on, like the fox had just rushed out of it when Boss had knocked on the door. A few knocked over racks of clothing hinted that he had left the room in a rush.

Felix plops me down onto the unmade bed and spins on his heels to walk away. Then, completely against what I know his character to be so far, he stops, turns his head to me and gives me a pained look. I look back up at him in confusion, trying and failing to decipher the meaning behind this display of emotion.

He leaves quickly after without another sound, leaving me alone in a stranger’s room with the stranger’s scent filling every inch of the air around me.

I pull at the collar, receiving a chorus of ominous beeps for my efforts. Something tells me that trying to remove the collar in any way is not a good idea unless I feel like ending myself painfully.

All I can hear now is the sound of the clock on the wall ticking and my own shaky breathing.

I’m alive.

But another fox died.

A fox died so that I could live.

Just like my father before him.

My continued survival is racking up a body count.

I…

I need to hide.

The pillows and blankets on the stranger’s bed made for a suitable makeshift den.


	9. Sell Yourself

Breathe in.

...

Breathe out.

...

Breathe in.

...

Breath o-

“GOD...DAMNIT!” I belt out, my claws dug deep into my scalp. I don’t care that I can feel a bit of blood staining my paws, I just need something to distract myself from my rage. Still hidden along the side of the stranger’s bed, draped with the stranger’s blankets, I let out my frustrations. The dark can do nothing to stop my fury. The makeshift den, usually a surefire way to calm me down in times of stress, is useless when it smells so unfamiliar and foreign.

This isn’t my bed.

This isn’t my home.

This isn’t even my district of Zootopia.

Every single bit of the world around me is different and uncomfortable.

To make it all worse, it’s really hot in this room and I don’t see any signs of a manual thermostat anywhere on the walls. At least with Doc and Mina, the room was kept pretty chilly. Once I passed the portal leading me to my worst life, the heat took over.

I don’t know what it feels like to shed my winter coat, but this itching is driving me crazy. I don’t want to be grey. I’ve always been so proud of my clean white fur, it would be devastating to lose that as well as everything else in my life.

Please, just let me stay the color I am.

I throw my tantrum without regard to who might hear on the other side of the door, but I don’t cry. There’s no tears left in me to cry. I don’t even feel sad right now. All of the despair flows out of me, leaving me an empty husk with no hope, no peace of mind and no love.

The only thing left in my heart is pure, raw anger.

I’m seeing red again.

My body starts trying to take control from me again but it doesn’t even need to. I’m already doing exactly what my other half wants to do; let out my pain.

I slide out of the fake den of blankets and pillows as quickly as my injured body will allow. It’s when I try to stand up that I feel my right paw buckle under me. After everything that has happened in the past week, I actually forgot that I messed up my paw kicking Bruce in the face.

Lovely.

Just perfect.

Now I’m both mangled beyond reason AND crippled.

How the hell am I going to do anything around here?

The itching only gets worse. Oh my god I need more of that stuff from Doc. Whatever it was, it provided me with the only true sense of calm that I’ve known since arriving here. God damn, why won’t this itching stop?!

“RRAAFUCK!” I bark, both of my arms trying to reach behind me to scratch the unreachable itch that seems to cover my entire back. The healing skin on my chest stretches painfully, forcing me to abandon my mission. There has to be something I can rub my back on! Something! Anything! Just a desk corner will do!

My body shakes violently as I limp around the room, rubbing myself over anything with a sharp enough point on it. The fridge is too big and the corners are rounded so that’s useless. The bed is covered in sheets and the only sharp parts look too sharp; they’d probably just open up even more holes in my skin. I end up having to settle with a knocked over coat hanger, still covered in clothes belonging to the recently deceased fox.

I flop around on it, trying to push the curved hooks into my skin. The itching only becomes a burning inferno of irritation as I scratch myself raw.

“AAAAAAAAAAAH!” I wail at the top of my lungs. My voice echoes once off the wooden walls of the room before silence reigns. I continue scratching myself, now rubbing all over the carpet, trying to find any sense of relief.

I need Doc!

I need medicine!

I need for this ridiculous tickling itch to stop!

Knock knock knock

My ears spin to the door and my heart skips a beat. I didn’t just hear that. Please tell me I didn’t just hear that. There’s no way there’s someone at the door already, it’s barely been an hour since I got stuck in here!

I hold my breath and wait, going completely motionless to maybe make it seem like the room is unoccupied. For a few seconds, I hold out hope that I hadn’t been heard.

“Hey! You okay in there?” an unfamiliar voice calls out, followed by another series of knocks, more urgent this time. My heart beats painfully against my ruined chest, feeling like it’s about to pop out entirely.

The doorknob jiggles.

I let out a terrified yelp and go into motion, my three good limbs scrambling to pull my body back into the semi-safety of the pillow fort. I accidentally put weight on my bad paw a few times and let out more yips of pain. The jiggling stops for a moment, giving me just enough time to scurry my way back into the darkness alongside the bed. The bed itself has a solid wood base so I can’t hide under it, unfortunately.

The door opens at the same moment that I tuck my tail into the shadows with me.

“Hey, Ash! What were those noises...what in the world?” an unfamiliar voice calls out into the disaster zone that used to be a room. From my hiding spot on the other side of the bed, I can’t see who is standing at the door. The voice sounds feminine though. I take a deep, silent breath and hold it in, trying to eliminate any evidence of my presence.

I hear the slow steps of the stranger entering the room with me.

My ears stand upright, swiveling in all directions in hopes of catching the slightest noises that might warn me of when to run. The fur all along my back and neck is raised, which does nothing but make the burning itch worse for me.

“Ash? Where are you, buddy?” the voice asks the seemingly empty room again. She steps even closer to the bed, forcing me to press myself as tightly into the den as possible. My back is trying to bust a hole in the wall behind me with how hard I’m squeezing against it.

My ears track the stranger’s movements as she wanders around the room, having to step over the numerous objects and bits of furniture. As she moves closer to the bathroom, I can finally see part of her.

She has white paws. And a white tail, almost as fluffy as my own. The blankets obscure the rest of her body, though, and I don’t have the courage to venture any further out past the safety of the shadows to see more of her.

“Hey! Where are you?” she calls into the bathroom. The tiny washroom is much too small to hide in, so she doesn’t wait long to go looking elsewhere for ‘Ash.’ She walks by me, every step causing a vibration to travel down my spine, tempting me to bolt once she passes by. But I stay right where I am, my body frozen.

The white-furred stranger moves around the rest of the room, moving some of the furniture back into position. She gets close to my den a few times, but hasn’t seemed to notice the odd positions of the blankets yet.

“Ash, I swear, if you’re pranking me…” she groans, her pace becoming lazier. My lungs start to burn from holding my breath for so long.

Please, just leave.

Walk back out the way you came and close the door.

Please.

“What in...oooh okay then,” her voice is close now. To my horror, her steps move with purpose and her paws come back into view right in front of the entrance to my makeshift den.

She stops and just stands there, the tip of her tail idly swishing from side to side.

“I wonder where Ash is,” the stranger sings half-heartedly. I can no longer hold my breath and am forced to exhale, letting out the smallest gasp before I am able to silence myself. I hear a scoff from above my den and curse the day I was born. The white paw taps impatiently on the carpet right outside the shadows cast by the blanket.

“You know, if you wanted to get in a quick romp in the foxhole before your season officially starts, you could have just asked,” the stranger says with annoyance in her voice as she reaches down. I look up and see the blankets gripped above me, jostling the entire den.

My heart stops as the blanket covering my only safe spot is pulled away in one quick motion.

The light pours back into my corner, revealing my trembling form to the world around me. I’m wedged tightly right where the two walls meet, my jaw open to show off my teeth. It’s the only defensive gesture I can think of.

Above me stands a shocked-looking arctic she-wolf.

Her bright green eyes stare at me in confusion and her tail stops wagging. She’s quite a bit taller than most mammals I’ve seen so far, except for Felix. Her clothing consists of a simple grey tank top, pretty close to what mine had been before it had gotten shredded by my father. Her bottom half is more decently covered by a pair of casual jeans, not even the slightest tear on them. But what catches my eye the most is the scarring over her right eye, leading down her face and stopping at her neck. Three distinct lines run parallel to each other, the very obvious pattern of a clawing. I should know; I have those same streaks covering my chest.

We stay in stalemate for a good chunk of time, neither of us willing to break the silence. We’re much too busy taking in the sight of the other to move on. Her eyes dart around me, focusing mostly on my still-healing chest. Some white fuzz is starting to grow back but my dark stitch-covered skin is very visible. Her eyes narrow and widen a few times, seeming to be working just as hard as her mouth is to form words.

“W-...who...what?” she stutters at me. I press myself even closer to the wall, not daring to take my eyes or ears off of her, in case she lunges down to kill me. There’s not much more I can do at the moment than wait for her to make the first move.

“Who...are you?” she finally manages to ask. I can’t respond, not with the giant lump in my throat threatening to suffocate me. She leans down suddenly, forcing a yelp out of me and making my body jump back. I have nowhere to go, though.

I’m at this wolf’s mercy.

She gets on her knees and crouches over me, her shadow covering my entire body. I just stare up at her, petrified. I expect to be ripped apart at any moment. To be honest, it probably wouldn’t be so bad. I’ve already come to terms with dying multiple times already. Maybe this time, she could actually take me out of this nightmare for good.

She leans in closer, her glowing green eyes still locked with mine. A pleasant smell invades my mind as she gets within biting distance, almost pulling me out of my defensive trance. Is she wearing perfume? It smells so much better than the stench that Felix left on me when he dropped me off.

Despite how scared I am of this wolfess, I can’t sense any hostile intent coming from her.

She just looks confused. A flurry of thoughts are visibly passing through her mind, made evident by the way her eyes dart from line to line as if she’s reading something.

She leans in close enough for me to snap at her and possibly escape.

But I don’t.

I want to think she can help me. I want to hope. She hasn’t killed me yet, so I already have that going for me. She’s not Felix and she’s not taking me to be skinned. She’s just a tall, pretty arctic wolfess that smells nice.

Her eyes fall on my collar and widen slightly. She leans into my neck and takes a deep inhale, taking in the smells stuck to my coat. With her so close, I freeze up. I can’t even breathe with her this close. Her muzzle is in the prime position to snap around my neck. Those numerous wolf teeth could end my short life in seconds.

She lets her breath out and sits back up quickly. The sudden motion jolts my body awake and I scramble to push myself further back. I only succeed in climbing my way up the wall until I’m standing again.

She follows my example, though her motions are much slower. Hey eyes aren’t meeting mine anymore; they’re facing down and probably not focusing on anything. She’s lost to her thoughts now.

“This...no. He can’t, he was safe!” she steps away from the bed and starts pacing around the room, completely obvious to me. I look behind her and see the door to the room is wide open. If she isn’t paying attention to me anymore, I bet I could run right out.

But...where would I go? The door isn’t even locked. If they let their own captives have control over the door locks to these rooms, I doubt there’s a way for me to actually get out of this floor. There’s probably some sort of door like the one to Doc’s room that only the bosses have control over. Maybe that’s why Doc and Mina weren’t wearing the collars; they were locked up tight and the only doors out were secured with heavy locks. Why waste a collar?

“Shit shit shit shit...Ash...FUCK!” she bursts out, whipping the cup of coffee that had been sitting on the table. It shatters against the wooden wall and splashes lukewarm liquid onto the surrounding carpet, staining it forever.

Behind her, the door is so tantalizingly...open.

I make a move towards the door, making sure to be completely silent as she has a tantrum of her own. My bum paw forces me to limp, making my task nearly impossible. I let out little yips every time I try to take a step, focusing my attention solely on the portal to the hallway.

She suddenly falls down onto the bed, the abrupt motion startling me. I watch her as she slams down onto the mattress and buries her face into the one remaining pillow. My journey to the open door is abandoned when I hear the muffled scream of pain she lets out into the stuffed headrest. The pillow does little to mute how much emotion she’s belting out. Her screaming continues for at least a minute, the wolfess having to take heaving breaths every few seconds to supply her lungs.

All I can do is stand there awkwardly with my one paw raised a few inches off the ground to avoid putting pressure on it. I don’t know what to do in this situation. I don’t know who this wolf is and I don’t trust her, but it’s obvious at this point that she’s not here for me. She probably doesn’t want to hurt me either. I’m the real stranger to her, having taken the place of the other fox. They probably knew each other well.

It hurts my chest even more to watch another animal going through this.

I know the feeling.

It’s the same overwhelming sadness I felt when I realized that my kitnapping hadn’t been a nightmare and that my father really was dead.

With a sigh, I turn away from the open door and limp slowly towards the bed. Her screaming has stopped by now and she’s resigned herself to laying limply with her face still smothered in the pillow. I take a closer look at her, since this is the first time since I’ve seen her that she’s not towering above me.

She isn’t as muscular as most of the other wolves I’ve seen in my life. She’s tall, but mostly just long. Her coat is a bit of a duller white than mine, like a fine ash color. Her tail would be quite nice if it wasn’t so droopy. Besides for the marks on her face, I see no other physical evidence of injury on her. Her tank top and jeans look and even smell nice and clean. These aren’t the signs of an animal locked up in a room or cage.

Could she be one of the animals Doc told me about?

The ones working here willingly?

Either way, the death of the other fox is devastating to her, which is already a step up from the blatant apathetic cruelty of Boss. She can’t be all bad.

I don’t say anything to her as she lays there. My eyes focus on the back of her head, waiting to see if she shows any signs of turning over or getting back up. Besides for taking a shaking breath every so often, she’s completely motionless.

I lower a trembling paw to her back and gently make contact with her shirt. The soft material compresses under my paw and allows me to take in some of her lingering body heat. She’s soft, warm and these simple traits calm me a good bit.

Her body twitches at my touch, as if I just brought her back to life. I skip back a few steps as her head turns towards me, leaving the safety of the pillow. I make the mistake of landing hard on my injured paw and let out a bark of pain. The leg gives out under me and I fall backwards onto a pile of fallen clothing, my vision now locked firmly on the ceiling above me. My head cracks against part of the toppled coat rack as the momentum from the fall carries me downwards. I yip again and my paws shoot to the throbbing section on the back of my head. A quick rubbing assures my body that I’ve assessed the damage and the pain can start going away.

First my chest, then my paw, and now my head. What other body parts can I ruin by the end of the day?

“Woah, there. Careful…” I hear the wolfess say down to me from her position on the bed. She had scooted herself over to see where I landed. Hey eyes aren’t red and she’s not crying, but there’s a definite emptiness in them that shows her true feelings right now.

I look back up at her and freeze again, not sure what to do or say. What do you say to a stranger who just lost someone they care about? Especially if you’re now occupying the room of their fallen friend?

“So...how did you get in here?” she asks with a slight glimmer of genuine curiosity. I clear my throat and try to form some words. The itch, having been muted by my fight or flight instincts, returns in full force. I can’t tell if it’s the heat or just my nerves, but it feels like my skin is trying to peel itself off. The carpet provides an abrasive enough surface to scratch my whole body on. The wolfess looks down at me from her perch, a sudden look of realization flashing across her face.

“Hey, hey, you...that’s...do you need some peace?” she asks. I squint up at her in confusion, not knowing how to reply to her. Instead of answering, I obey my body’s orders for more scratching. Before I’m aware of my own actions, my good leg is pushing me across the shag carpet like it’s one big piece of sandpaper. The lights in the room start to blur together and I’m forced to pant to try to halt my rising body temperature.

“Shit, yeah, hold on,” she says as her body leaps into action. The bed creaks under her weight as she pushes herself off and heads into the kitchen area. She stands on her very tips of her paws and reaches up to a gap on top of the fridge. After a few moments of shuffling objects around, she lowers herself back down with a small box clasped in her grip. I try to follow her motions further, but the itch takes control and suddenly I’m shaking wildly.

I don’t know what’s going on, it’s just an itch!

Why is a stupid itch doing this to me?

I can’t control my body now and just resign to watching the blurred lights spin together from my spot on the floor.

A strong force picks me up by my shoulders and lifts me into a sitting position. I try to look around at whatever is moving me, but my head falls to the side and I lose control of even that. The only thing I can make out is a grey shape partially covering a pretty white shape. The white thing seems to be the one moving my body around with such little effort.

I feel a slight pressure in my neck, followed by a flow of cool relief. It takes only seconds for my body to stop trembling and for the itching to stop. The sensation of calm and painlessness washing over me is familiar but I can’t remember from where.

I’m just glad I can start to see shapes again. The white and grey shapes sharpen until I can see that they’re actually belonging to the wolfess. I’m staring down at the side of her tank top as her arm supports my miniscule weight. Her white fur surrounds my neck and face, providing a relaxing environment to regain my sanity in. The pleasant smell is all around me now, drowning out the smell of Felix and the burnt shock collar.

“There, that should last you a while. Feel better?” she questions, fiddling with something in the paw she isn’t using to hold me. I lazily roll my head up so our eyes can meet.

What lovely eyes she has. They’re like emeralds peeking out of freshly fallen snow.

“Mmmm…” I moan in contentment. I remember this feeling now. This is the stuff Doc gave me to calm me down and numb my pain. The weight of the world’s been lifted from my shoulders once more, allowing me to enjoy the small moment in the protective arms of the much bigger mammal. Nothing is trying to kill me right now and that’s all I need to be happy.

She gives a half-smirk down at me, but her narrowed eyes betray her true thoughts.

“Don’t think I’ve even seen someone so young hooked on this stuff. That was quite the reaction you had there, bud. Now then, who are you?” she asks while looking down into my eyes. Her breath even has a minty scent to it and I enjoy the little huffs she sends down onto my muzzle. I let out a relaxed yawn before even attempting to think of a response.

I almost answer with ‘Adam’ but the memory of my new name enters just in time for me to stop myself. My family is counting on me to keep their identities safe.

“Hm...Winter…” I mumble out, the effects of the medicine making my mouth a bit numb. Shoot, this name thing is going to be hard to get used to. At least it’s worth the effort.

“Winter, huh? Is that your ‘real’ name?” she asks with a raised brow. If I wasn’t under the effects of the calming medication, I might have choked from being called out like this. But since I’m nice and relaxed, it’s a lot easier to lie.

“Mhmm,” I sigh simply. She watches my reaction for a few seconds, waiting to see if I crack. Seeing no breaches in my mask, she gives an actual genuine smile.

“Good, you must have come from Doc. I guess you already got the rundown on what’s going to be going on?” she questions. I give a sleepy shake of my paw in a ‘kinda sorta’ gesture. “I’m just guessing here, but those cuts on your chest...they can’t use you right away, so they’re keeping you. They also gave you Ash’s collar, so...yeah…”

I sense her mask rapidly crumbling under her fresh emotions so I reach a paw up and touch her cheek. My paw is dwarfed by the size of her head but she subconsciously leans into the touch. She gives me a pensive look before continuing.

“Did they tell you what they’re going to have you doing yet?”

I look up at her and tilt my head. She sighs and closes her eyes.

“Like, they obviously want you to do something if they...replaced Ash...but...he was a breeder. They can’t possibly expect you to…” Her eyes widen as her thoughts connect.

“Actually...they mentioned something about...knocking around vixens, I think…” I want to be helpful in answering her but my thoughts are so pleasantly muted. I feel like I’m constantly in that state of just waking up in the morning.

“Knocking UP? Did they say knocking UP? Please, Winter, please tell me they didn’t…”

I know that’s what they said now, but from the way she’s acting, I don’t know if I should tell her the truth. 

“...Yeah, that’s it…” I mumble, fearing her reaction. Her pupils shrink somewhat and her gaze locks onto the floor instead of at me.

“Just asking, but...have you ever had sex before…?”

“No…”

“Ever been in a relationship?”

“No…”

“Held paws…?”

“Uh-uh…”

“...Winter...how old are you, exactly…?”

The last time I answered this question, I made Mina cry. I don’t want to make this wolf cry after she just lost her friend. But I’ve been telling every truth except my name since I started talking to her, so it wouldn’t make sense to lie to her about this.

“Twelve. I turn thirteen in June…” I can tell as soon as the words leave my muzzle that I should have lied. Her body tenses up, her fur bristles and she wraps her other arm around me in what I think is a protective gesture.

“They...but you’re just a baby...they couldn’t…” she mutters darkly to herself as she rocks us both back and forth in place. I feel her minty breath wash down the back of my neck as she talks to herself. Her new state of mind concerns me, but the medicine calms me so much that I’m forced to sit there in her arms, enjoying the contact. Who knows when I’ll be able to feel safe in a hug ever again?

My ear flicks as something wet falls onto it. I turn my head up and am rewarded with another drop of warm liquid hitting my nose. My gaze turns to the wolfess, who is shedding fresh tears but has no visible expression besides shock. It’s the kind of reaction my father would have when he came back home from a particularly rough night at work. He never gave me the details of what he went through, but I always got the feeling that every one of those nights stuck with him until the end.

I miss my dad.

“Huh?” the wolf’s voice vibrates in my ear and draws me from my thoughts. I’m confused for a moment, but quickly realize that I said that out loud. She moves my body to the side so she can look down at me without hitting me with her muzzle.

“Listen, buddy...I know you want to go home and your father is probably worried about you, but please don’t mention your family to anyone else here. It’s for your family’s safety, trust me…” she explains, removing one of her supportive paws to wipe away the moisture staining her face. I give her a sad, knowing look and turn my gaze down.

“They already know about him,” I say softly. Her eyes widen a bit but before she can interrupt, I finish making my point.

“They killed him.”

Her ears fold back against her head and she squeezes her eyes shut. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, holds it for a few seconds, and lets it back out.

“They...could have just taken him to the cages, he might be-”

“He died on top of me. After he did this,” I say, pointing to the numerous jagged claw marks covering my entire chest. Her eyes shoot back open in surprise and her focus returns to my injuries. But after a few seconds, her expression morphs into one of contemplation. She’s visibly connecting the dots with her eyes, tracking the numerous stitches still holding me together.

“He...he saved you...didn’t he?” she asks. I nod my head and place my paw over my chest, feeling some pain but appreciating it all the same.

They’re his gifts.

“They took me because they wanted my fur right away. And he...took my place,” I explain to her. Her expression becomes one of admiration. Admiration for my father’s actions, for his plan, and for me being able to state it so clearly.

“I think I love your dad,” she blurts out. The statement is so random with how she words it that it forces a small chuckle from me. She gives me an embarrassed grin and looks away to hide her blushing. I doubt I would be able to see it anyway how thick her fur is.

“I love him, too.”

She looks back to me with a much warmer smile. Her other arm returns to its place and she rocks me some more. It feels good to say out loud how proud I am of my father. For the rest of my life, no matter how long it may be, I’ll tell everyone what he did for me...what he was willing to do to save his son from such a hopeless situation.

These injuries don’t hurt. They feel amazing. I will never blame him again for doing what he did.

I sigh and lean back into the wolf, letting my body go completely limp in relaxation. Even the annoying bulk of the shock collar doesn’t bother me at this moment. I let her pleasant aroma rub off on me, hopefully ridding me of Felix’s death stench.

“You smell nice,” I whisper weakly up at her. I feel her chest heave with a genuine scoff as she hugs me a bit tighter. Her arms, despite being thin for a wolf, are plenty strong enough to move me around with minimal effort.

“You’re a little charmer, you know that?” she laughs. My face heats up, but I can’t help the smile that spread across it.

She’s nice.

“Can you help me?” I ask.

“Hm? Help you with what?”

“I want to get out of here,” I say, the calm tone of my voice betraying the fire in my gut.

“We all do, Winter. Believe me,” her voice echoes pleasantly in my ear. So she’s not here willingly either. She’s not one of the ones making a living off of doing this to mammals, she’s just as much a victim as I am.

“Are you trying?” I ask.

“Of course, bud. But this isn’t the kind of place you can just walk out of. I’m just one mammal, I can’t do it alone. I’ve just been trying to keep as many of us alive as I can. I thought Ash was safe, but...you know how that ended…”

It ended with the fox writhing in pain until his heart finally stopped.

I stay silent for a few moments, pondering my place in this mess.

“What can I do to stay alive?” I inquire. She takes a quick breath in through her teeth, making a seething hiss sound.

“God, I don’t like having to hear a twelve year old ask me that question. But to answer it, the best way to maintain your position around here is to make yourself valuable to them,” she explains with a pained expression.

“Valuable...like how?”

“Like, say you have a talent or something that they can profit from. Singing, dancing, playing musical instruments, anything flashy. If you can keep proving to them that your life is worth more in the long run than your fur would be in the short term, they’ll keep you. There’s a casino upstairs, if Doc didn’t already tell you. They use some of us for shows and live music. A lot of the mammals here are kept for breeding. But sometimes the breeding isn’t enough, as you just found out a little while ago. They can replace a male really easily if they want to and they’ll lose no money. The females are usually safe as long as they can keep making pups.”

I nod along, trying to etch her words into my memory for later use. She takes a breath and carries on, laying out the plan for my fate like it’s nothing more than a to-do list.

“So if they ARE going to use you for breeding, you’ll need something else to show them you’re worth keeping alive. I know male arctic foxes don’t come around all that often since they’re mostly out of their range, but every so often someone like you will catch their eye. And if they don’t need you for breeding, they’ll find something else. If there’s absolutely nothing else that they can do with you, they’ll just get rid of you to clear a room.”

A shiver passes through me at the grim aspect of living here. Not only am I going to have to breed, but if another fox ever comes into their possession that they don’t immediately use for their fur, I’m dead.

“Do you have anything? A talent or something you can sell to them?” she asks. My brain gets to work sorting through my different hobbies, struggling to think of something that could be useful for a casino.

I’m a good swimmer. That’s worthless.

I like to fish. There’s no lakes in a casino.

I like music, but I’ve never attempted playing any of my own.

I have really good hearing, but unless I can hear players cheating at cards, that’s bunk.

I’m apparently prone to violent fits of blinding rage. That one’s useful but would probably get me killed.

I’ve been mistaken for a vixen plenty of times.

That one might work but the implications of taking advantage of my body’s natural feminine shape scare me. I don’t want to be used because I’m pretty. And I’m pretty sure my new wounds will taint any kind of beauty I had before.

As I’m trying to think of something to come up with, my ears are drawn to the sounds of heavy steps marching through the doorway. A large shadow looms over us in seconds, taking the wolfess completely by surprise.

I look up at the intruder and almost choke on my spit.

The large, hostile and familiar form of Bruce is standing right above us, the massive hog out of breath and overheating. His chest heaves as if he’s just run a marathon to get to us. His fists clench and slacken multiple times as his yellow eyes dart between the two of us. He looks like he’s both about to panic and about to explode at the same time.

“Tess,” he growls, his offensive posture making her lean back away from him with her ears pressed against her head. She gives him a grim look, already seeming to know what he’s going to say.

“Where. Is. Ash?” he demands, his fists starting to tremble with the sheer crushing force being exerted on them. His eyes narrow even further, daring her to give him an answer he doesn’t approve of.

She doesn’t even answer.

All she does is lower her gaze to the ground and he gets the message.

His body instantly loses all of its furious tension and he deflates like a balloon. His fists open loosely and even his eyes sag down. He looks like he’s in a daze. His weight brings him stumbling back a few steps until he slams into a wall and slumps to the floor in defeat.

He’s staring right at me.

Oh god, Bruce is crying.

“...Should have killed you…” he chokes out as his emotions start to take control of his body. A few ugly-sounding sobs escape his chest, making it hard for him to focus his anger on me. I try to hide myself in Tess’s chest fur, not wanting to be in the room with the very same hog who ended my father’s life.

“I SHOULD HAVE FUCKING KILLED YOU!” he bellows, rumbling the walls around us. Surprisingly, he doesn’t lunge for me or do anything violent. He just grips his forehead with both fists and lets out his misery. A few agonized screams escape him but he doesn’t move from his position on the floor.

If this were any other mammal, I’d sympathize with them.

But not Bruce.

Bruce can go choke on that pipe he killed my father with for all I care.

Now he gets to lose someone just like he made me lose someone.

It’s actually rather satisfying, watching the pig shudder and wail into his hooves. I wish Ash didn’t have to die for Bruce to feel this level of pain, of course. As far as I know, Ash was a good fox. He might have tried to attack me at the time, but that was obviously a last-ditch attempt to get rid of his replacement and save his spot.

Would I have to deal with seeing my replacement standing right in front of me someday?

The wolf, who I now know is called Tess, doesn’t do or say anything while Bruce has his breakdown on the other side of the room. Her arms are still wrapped around me like two strong furry seatbelts. I want them to stay that way in case Bruce gathers the strength to lunge at me. I know I wouldn’t be able to run away or out-maneuver him like last time, not with my injured paw.

I notice that the cuts I have inflicted on Bruce are already scarred over, leaving a set of crossed lines passing over his eye. I hope those stay with him forever, a reminder of the family he tore apart. His missing tusk and ear are both still missing, of course. He will have to spent the rest of his life looking like a torture victim.

Good.

It’s the least he can suffer, given how many lives he’s ruined.

After a few more minutes of ugly-crying, Bruce calms down and regains control over his body. Without looking back at either of us, the giant warthog stands back up, wipes his snot-covered face with his burly forearm, and shuffles to the doorway.

He looks like an empty shell of his usual self.

A sudden slam and cracking noise draws my attention to the wall next to Bruce, which is now sporting a giant hole in the woodwork. He draws back a slightly bleeding fist and drops it back down to his side, where it hangs limply once again.

The barely audible dripping of blood on the carpet is the only noise around us for a few tense moments.

“I hate you…” he growls. Even though he’s facing the hallway outside the door, I can tell he’s talking directly to me now. An indignant rage starts to build in my chest as he speaks.

“He was safe. We had a deal. Ash was supposed to be kept alive as long as we did what they wanted.” Bruce’s tone slowly shifts from anger to depression the longer he talks.

“You killed Ash.”

“You killed my dad.”

Bruce’s snout twists around to face me, a shocked look flashing across his face. He doesn’t even look mad at my words; he just looks amazed that I had the balls to say anything back to him at all.

Tess tightens her arms around me, her legs positioning themselves to get ready to run with me if she needs to. I don’t care that saying anything to him was reckless. The pig needs to know that he’s not the only one that can feel pain.

Bruce’s jaw moves up and down. He’s at a complete loss for words.

Tess slowly relaxes her muscles as it becomes clear that he’s not going to fly into a fit of rage. Bruce turns his head towards the hallway again and lets out a few huffs.

“It hurts...doesn’t it…?” he asks, sounding more vulnerable than I ever expected him to be able to sound. Even Tess behind me draws a shuddering breath at how weak he sounds.

“Yeah, it does,” I answer. He doesn’t look at me, but I can tell his eyes are busy staring at nothing. His mind is doing all the work now, trying to process emotions that I bet the pig had never felt before in his life.

He nods slightly and walks back out of the room, taking his gym-stink with him.

Tess and I listen to him march his way back out of the hallway until we can’t hear him anymore.

“That was strange,” Tess mumbles to me, her eyes still staring at where Bruce had been only a minute earlier. “Did he really?”

“Really what?”

“Kill your father…”

“Yes. With a pipe,” I answer, not feeling shy enough to want to spare her the details. She inhales deeply once again and lets it out. Maybe that’s a way for her to calm herself down. I should start doing that, too. Maybe it will keep me from losing myself to my rage so easily.

“Bruce is a monster, but...he really did love Ash. Ash was the reason he worked here at all, actually. Bruce got stuck in some gambling debt and chose to work the farm for a while. He found Ash and they...well, he stuck around. Didn’t want to let Ash go.”

“And then he took me and killed my father,” I state bluntly. I don’t care about Bruce’s backstory. He can have the most tragic tale explaining every one of his reasons for every evil thing he’s ever done, but it doesn’t change the fact that he ruined my life. Tess seems to realize this and lowers her ears again shamefully.

“Right, yeah...sorry. Didn’t mean to sound like I was standing up for him,” she apologizes. I try her method of taking a deep breath, holding it and then letting it out slowly. As the air escapes my lungs, I do actually feel myself calming down somewhat.

The medicine is starting to wear off a bit; I can start to feel my emotions returning but the pain in my chest and maddening itch is thankfully still muted. Hopefully it stays like this for at least a few hours.

Tess suddenly stands up with me held tightly to her chest, almost suffocating me with her chest fur. My body heats up in embarrassment but she doesn’t seem to notice. I twist my head around and take in some air before examining my newfound height.

Woah, I’ve never been this tall before. I’m so used to being low to the ground that I never tried to picture what my life would be like if I was taller. I can see pretty much every detail of the room around me from this perspective.

She carries me over to the unmade bed and sets me down gently in the middle, even being careful of my bad paw. I watch her move around the bed, collecting the various blankets and pillows strewn about the room. The supplies from my makeshift den are soon enough cast over me in the way they’re supposed to be used. They’re honestly pretty soft and comfy, but there’s still an overpowering scent left over from the previous owner.

I’m in someone else’s bed and that bothers me.

I miss MY bed.

I miss my family.

By now, mom and Beth have probably been panicking for over a week. Who have they contacted to help them find us? I’m sure the Bigs have been told of our disappearance. How is Fru Fru taking it? I don’t even want to think about how Beth is reacting. She had cried all night just from me vanishing for ONE night. A whole week?

They’re all devastated. And it’s all my fault.

I feel Tess’s large paw rub my head gently and I realize that I’ve been tucked in. The blanket, while heavy and thick, is actually pretty chilly. Is this some kind of cooling blanket I’ve never heard about before? Why couldn’t I have found one of these back home? I probably would have dragged it to Savanna Central to keep myself cool. Then maybe my fur wouldn’t have caught the eyes of the snatchers.

“You should get some rest, Winter. I know you’ve had a bad day. Can’t promise tomorrow will be any better, but we can at least do our best,” Tess calls to me from the doorway. I turn my head to look at her, my gut sinking at the thought of being alone with my thoughts again. Why can’t she just stay here and hug me forever?

“What’s your talent?” I ask her out of nowhere. It has been bugging me for a while, since she isn’t wearing a collar like mine and seems to be able to roam around the same as Bruce. She turns back to me and leans on the doorway with her arms folded across her chest.

“I’m...well, I’m kind of like the manager, I guess. When new animals come in, I’m in charge of making sure they know what their roles are, what they need to do and when to do it. Also have to keep everyone accounted for. And in your case, well...you’ll be seeing a lot of me, for better or for worse. I know you’re young, but they want you to breed. If you can’t or won’t, then I can’t keep you safe. Are you understanding what I’m telling you?” she asks with a pained look.

“You’re...going to teach me how to have sex?” I answer, a new weight falling onto my shoulders. She cringes hard, the sound of my youthful voice having to say those words seeming to hurt her more than any physical pain.

But she gives a half-hearted nod either way.

“But remember what I said, bud. Come up with something else I can use to convince them to keep you. Just give it some thought tonight...please?”

The pleading look in her eye is more than my guilty conscience can bear. I don’t want to see her suffer over me. I’ve seen enough animals hurt for my sake.

“Okay…” I sigh. Sleep was already going to be hard enough to find, now I’m going to be actively trying to brainstorm on top of that.

She lifts her paw to the lightswitch and flicks it, casting me into darkness once again. The light from the hallway streams in around her, casting a shadow of her body that falls over me. Something about it is oddly comforting, like the universe is telling me that she’s watching over me somehow.

The pain in my chest returns a bit just as she starts to close the door behind her.

“Hey, Tess?” I call out. The door opens back up slightly and the wolf’s muzzle pokes through.

“Yeah?”

“When can I get more of that medicine? It’s starting to wear off,” I inquire. The tip of her muzzle frowns slightly and her face pushes through so she can meet my eyes.

“...Uh, bud. That wasn’t medicine. That was peace. If I give you more, you might actually overdose,” she states bluntly.

My breath catches in my throat and I take a big, dry swallow.

Oh.

That was a drug.

I’m on drugs.

The itching before...was that withdrawal?

Shit.

“You okay?” Tess breaks me from my shocked state. I blink a few times and nod slowly. Thanks to her vision, she can see me even in the darkness of the room around me.

“I’ll have someone come check out that paw of yours in the morning. Night, Winter,” she says just before closing the door and cutting off the rest of the light.

The room is completely dark now and I’m alone.

She said someone would be here about my paw?

Would that be...Doc?

I’d be able to see Doc again?

…

Would she bring more peace?


	10. The Vixen Room

Thanks to the chilling effect of the blanket, I do actually manage to get some sleep. Luckily I don’t dream at all. I’m afraid of what I would dream about after all I’ve been through in the past week.

My reality is enough of a nightmare.

The only hint of the time is the ticking clock on the wall near the door. But because there are no windows in this room, I don’t know if the time that it’s displaying is for the day or night. The lack of sunlight streaming through a window upon waking up is just another grim reminder that none of what happened was in my head.

All I know is that it was around 11 when Tess turned the lights off.

The room is still pitch black around me so I can’t even see the clock to figure out how long I ended up sleeping for.

What woke me up?

…

A painful and urgent ache in my bladder answers my question promptly.

When’s the last time I actually got to use the bathroom? I’m pretty sure I just kept pissing myself when I was under the effects of the painkillers. Or maybe they had a bedpan under me? Oh god, I hope they didn’t use a catheter…

I probably would still be feeling that if they did.

A shiver passes through me and reminds me of my new mission.

I move the heavy blanket off of my body, slide myself over to the side of the bed and throw my legs over. A quick twinge of pain shoots up from my paw, telling me that it is indeed still messed up. I rise from the bed on my good paw, trying to look around in the darkness of the room.

Tess might have picked some stuff up but there were still objects laying on the ground for me to possibly trip over. Thanks to my quick thinking, I outsmart the toppled coat rack by hopping towards the bathroom door with my bad paw extended out so that it would bump into any obstructions in my way.

I make it to the door to the bathroom without crashing down and busting my other paw. The lightswitch takes a few moments to find, especially since it’s just barely within my reach. I don’t know what kind of animal these rooms were designed for, but I’m not one of them.

The toilet is equally challenging, especially with a limp.

The fan provides some noise to listen to while I relieve myself. It sounds just like the fan in my house, if not a bit clunkier. It’s a bit of a calming thought, having something resembling normality in the room I’ll be staying in. Maybe I can hide out here sometimes and just listen to the fan.

After flushing the toilet, I go to wash my paws in the yellow-tinted sink.

I make the mistake of looking up in the mirror.

Some other fox stares back at me with red, tired eyes and an oil-soaked coat. I can see the numerous ugly wounds on my chest for the first time from an outer perspective. Until now, all I saw was what was visible when I looked down. With my whole body in sight, the wounds seem to cover more of me than I thought. It might just be how eye-catching they are. It’s hard to see the fox wearing the stitches when the stitches are so much more interesting.

I’m thin.

I was always slender, thanks to my feminine frame.

But now I just look like I’m starving.

Do I feel hungry? I just kind of attributed the constant pain in my gut to the stitched section of my body. When’s the last time I had a drink? Come to think of it, how the hell am I still alive? The things that need to go into a body to keep it ticking have been neglected for so long that I should probably be dead by now.

I turn the sink on and check the color of the water. Luckily for me, the water looks fine. It’s nice and clear, and doesn’t smell too much like metal.

My muzzle dips into the stream of life-giving liquid and I drink heavily from it. The cool sensation of hydration chills me to my core and even extinguishes the small itch that had started to form.

If drinking water will help keep that agonizing tickle out of my skin, then chug away, young fox.

I only stop my lapping when I run out of air. My head jerks back and allows me to gasp out loud, sucking in as much oxygen as I can. The mirror catches my eye again.

Hm, I really do look greasy. I haven’t showered in over a week, after all. Is there a-?

There is!

I spy a shower curtain in the mirror and turn my body to face the heavenly facility. Like the rest of the room, it’s fairly clean but holds a yellow tint over what probably used to be pure white. The shower curtain is nothing special; just a white synthetic material that lets the light through enough so that you can see what you’re doing when you’re bathing.

My pants and underwear, the only articles of clothing I have left, are tossed aside with little regard to my aching paw. I’m so excited about the prospect of washing the last week of filth from my fur that I place weight on my injured limb multiple times without flinching.

I turn the water on with the singular knob and adjust the temperature to my liking.

It’s the coldest it will go.

I step in and close the curtain behind me. The water soaks through my fur in moments, chilling me comfortably to the bone. I have to stand partially on one paw, so I take great care not to slip on the slick floor of the tub.

The cold water stings on my stitches so I turn my back to the freezing stream, letting the torrent flow down my back instead.

For at least an hour, I just stand in the shower, letting the purifying liquid soak me completely. The stress, grime and stink of the last week of torture flows down my coat and circles the drain. I don’t even notice the body wash and fur conditioner until I start to reach for the knob to turn the water off.

The cleaning products smell like Ash’s room. Or Ash smelled like the cleaning products and just made his room smell like himself. Now with the white foam covering every inch of my body, I smell just like him. The overwhelming scent of a stranger is just what I smell like now.

It’s a bit poetic, in a dark, twisted sort of way. I basically just walked into the fox’s room and took over his life. His belongings, bed, even scent are mine now. To any animal outside this farm, Ash might as well have never existed at all. Did his family already believe he was dead? Would they ever get to know of his true fate?

Would mine?

The freezing water washes the soap out of my coat as I start to lose myself in my dark thoughts again. I can already notice that my smell, the one I’m so used to from always using the same kind of conditioner, is gone. Another aspect of my life before is chipped away, leaving me less of the fox I grew up as.

I’m Winter, now.

Adam is dead.

I just wish Adam dying didn’t have to cause so much pain for those who were close to him. Even complete strangers had to suffer for the sins of the kit.

My mood is pitch black by the time I turn the shower off and rub myself down with a dry towel. My fur is still damp, and will probably fluff out even more if I don’t blowdry it.

Ash doesn’t seem to own a blowdryer. Having a thin summer coat probably allowed him to make it by without having to dry his fur. My thick white coat, on the other paw, will absolutely become maddening every time I bathe if I don’t find something to dry myself with.

The last thing I need is to look even more like a vixen with my fur puffed out.

But what can I do? I’m just a captive here. I should consider myself lucky that I have a room to myself at all in this scenario. Who ever heard of hostages being provided their own living quarters? I got my own bathroom, fridge and bed.

I finish drying myself as best I can with the towel and exit the bathroom. It takes me a minute to limp to the room’s light switch, having to use the light from the bathroom as a guide, but I’m able to illuminate the room around me soon enough.

Nothing’s changed since Tess was here. There are still bits of broken coffee mug laying in a heap against the opposite wall. I’ll have to remember not to walk around over there until I can get that cleaned up.

With a sleepy sigh, I plop myself onto the bed in a sitting position and stare down at my paws.The reminders of my reality keep hitting me over and over again, trying to drag me down with them. I’m a bit too far in to let myself go now, though. Even though my life is at its worst and things are bleaker than they’ve ever been, I’m still alive.

But...why?

Why do things keep happening that spare me at the last moment?

Why does the universe seem to think I’m worthy of saving when it is just as quick to torture me?

My ears pick up the approaching thump of steps echoing in the hallway outside my door. There are at least two mammals coming this way, one of them a lot heavier than the other. Without even thinking, I hide myself under the covers of my bed and make sure absolutely no part of me is showing.

The steps get closer until they’re right at my door.

I shift uncomfortably under the blanket, my wet fur starting to soak into the fabric. Under the cover of my hiding spot, I listen as the door clicks open and the softer steps enter the room with me. But they enter in a stumbling motion, like the owner had been shoved.

“Fuckin hell, not so rough, Lex. I’m going,” I hear a familiar voice say into the silence of the room’s walls.

“Don’t tell me what to do. Just do your job and wait for me to come back when you’re done. I got a few others I need to check up on. And it’s the big day for a certain fuckwad chinchilla!”

I’ve only heard that voice a few times, but the owner of it is burned into my memory.

Lex is the black bear who my father almost reduced to a puddle. And by the sound of his cruel laughter, the beatdown he received from my father did little to humble him to the perils of other mammals. He’s still just as uncaring and just as blatantly sick in the head.

“Fine, I’ll keep my ‘eye’ out for you,” I hear the familiar voice chuckle, sounding devoid of humor and life. Lex’s laughter stops and the door suddenly slams so hard that I hear the hole in the wall crack a bit wider. Silence returns to the room except for the sounds of steps approaching my hidden form under the blanket.

“Alright then, let’s get this over with. Hurt your paw, I heard?”

My heart swells as I connect the voice to the face. After all, I had heard it the day before.

I yank the blanket down from my head and look up into Doc’s eyes, watching them glaze over in shock. She drops something to the side of her, the object hitting the ground and expelling its many metal tools. They clatter around for a few seconds but they go ignored.

“Doc!” I scream at her, trying to force myself not to burst out into tears. My voice assaulting her ears must prove to her mind that it’s not melting down.

“KID!” she bellows before reaching around me and lifting me off of the bed. My entire world becomes filled with her dark brown fur and familiar scent. I squirm with joy as I hug her back, rubbing myself all over her and trying to cover myself with the safety of her aromas. She doesn’t smell all that pleasant, but I had come to equate her scent with care and love. If I’m smelling her all around me, that must mean that I’m safe for the time being.

I never want to leave her side.

“Oh god oh god oh god oh my god you’re alive!” she practically sings. We’re spinning together, the room nothing more than a blur of color passing by us. It feels like we’re dancing together, even though my paws aren’t touching the ground.

The walls echo with the sounds of my ecstatic yipping, creating a chorus of happy emotions in the room around us. She laughs along with me and cries just as many happy tears. In our fluid motions of glee, we rub all over each other and cover ourselves in our feelings. I’m damp with her tears by the time she stops swirling and sets me back down on the bed. She’s in my face before I can begin to speak.

“But how?! How did you-?! What happened?!” she asks all at once, almost choking on her tongue. Her clawed paws plant themselves on either one of my shoulders, holding me in place while she overwhelms me with affection.

I have to let all of my barks out before I can answer her. It’s like I’m a deflating balloon. Even when I manage to halt my vocal expulsions, my body retains the excited trembling. I honestly feel like I’m about to explode. It’s only been a little over a week since I was taken, but positive emotions already feel like a foreign concept.

Doc’s eyes dart around my body and land on the obtrusive black strap on my neck. Her upright posture slumps slowly as her mind processes what the collar means for those who wear it. And then there’s me, beaming up at her like I’m the happiest kit in the world, despite my situation.

“They...are going to breed you...aren’t they…?” She pieces the words together slowly and with great care. I follow her gaze to my collar and the reality around us starts to sink back in.

“Yeah…” I sigh. I don’t want to bum her out, but there’s not much going on around here that isn’t depressing as hell. And I’m starting to grasp what they’re going to have me doing, but I won’t know the whole deal until Tess starts to teach me.

“And this room...that’s Ash’s collar, isn’t it?” My mood falls even further and I start to feel another itch start to pester me from under my skin. I nod slowly up at the crestfallen wolverine.

She takes a massive, heaving sigh and runs her claws through the tuft of loose brown fur on her head. I know it’s a lot to take in for these poor mammals, losing one of their own. Just the idea that I’m going to have to live in a place where the animals I know will just randomly disappear at any time is daunting.

Doc looks away from me, her eyes unfocused and her mind lost in thought. Her other paw rubs my head gently, though, and I accept the affection greedily. I’m just so relieved to see her again so soon after I thought I would be leaving them forever. I broke their hearts without meaning to and I want to fix the pain I caused them.

“Is Mina okay?” I inquire, my ears lowering to let her scratch the new itch. She glances up at me and sighs again, crossing her burly forearms against her chest tightly.

“She’s...not really, kid. She closed herself in her locker and won’t come out. I couldn’t get through to her last night...seeing you carried away like a sack of potatoes, it...it broke her, I think.”

I close my eyes tightly and try not to picture the sensitive little mink going through another breakdown over me.

“But!” Doc starts back up. “You’re alive! Once I finish here, I can go back and tell her the good news!” The wolverine is showing a lot more emotion now than what I had known her to be capable of. Maybe since I’ve been given a purpose that doesn’t end with me at the business end of a gut knife, she’s okay with letting herself open up a bit more. I’m fine with that, I know her and Mina more than anyone here. They’re the closest thing I have to family. Tess is nice but I only spent a bit of time with her so far. And from what she told me before leaving me last night, the things she’ll have to teach me won’t be pleasant for either of us.

“Please, do, Doc. I still have her screams playing in my head from yesterday…” I plead, holding my ears down with my paws to accentuate my point.

“Me too, kiddo. Me too…” Doc nods her head to my request.

“Can she visit? Like how they sent you over?” I ask.

“Weeell, I’m not sure. She’s the one they send to take care of the smaller patients and most of the mustelids. I’m responsible for the medium-sized mammals. You kind of teeter on the edge of those two groups. You’re not a small small guy but you are a...small guy. I don’t know, I’ll see if I can work something out. I know she’ll be begging to see you the moment I tell her you’re alive.”

“I bet. I’d come over there myself if I had a set of those keys and my paw wasn’t hurting so bad.”

“Oh, yeah, your paw! Let me get that looked at. Did you hurt it recently?” Doc moves around with practiced precision, falling back into her medical routine. The metal tools on the ground are scooped back up and placed back into her bag, which she lifts and places next to me on the bed. She positions me so that I’m sitting on the edge with my legs hanging over.

“No, this happened back when I was taken,” I respond. Doc lifts a brow up at me, my injured paw being held softly in her grip.

“What happened?”

“I kicked Bruce in the face and took his tusk off,” I answer with a strong sense of pride. She chokes out a laugh and covers her eyes, trying to hold the rest of her mirth inside.

“You-heh...you h...what? Really?”

“Yep! Kicked him as hard as I could. Scratched his face and bit his ear off, too,” I tell her with a beaming smile. Doc’s eyes widen in realization.

“That was you?! Oh, kid, you got him good! I thought that had been your father’s work! Geez, he really did get the shit kicked out of him by a kit! I’m never going to let him live that down!” Doc’s entire body shakes with her laughter. She’s able to work on my paw even with the added movements.

She bends my paw in certain directions, taking note of how much she can flex it before I flinch. It seems to hurt the most when she tries to bend it upwards. She quiets down after a few minutes and we both sit in silence, focusing on getting my injury taken care of.

“...So how did he take it? About Ash, I mean,” Doc asks while she works.

“He broke down crying. Tess was holding me like she was getting ready to carry me somewhere else. He didn’t attack either of us, though,” I explain to her.

“Woah, really? Surprised he didn’t throw at least a punch, especially since you’re wearing his collar and all. Wait...you said Tess was in here? Why? She’s supposed to be in charge of the breeders.” Doc’s eyes widen even more and she looks up from my paw. Her shimmering brown eyes stare deeply into mine, begging me not to tell her what I have to tell her.

“Well...yeah,” I admit.

“No,” she states and stops her work. She isn’t looking at me anymore. Her eyes are fixed on the ground, burning a hole straight through it. I can already sense the joy of finding me alive is being taken from her by the fact that I’m going to be an underaged father of doomed kits. I had already told her once that I was to be bred, but it seems like it’s finally getting through to her.

“Doc-”

“NO. I won’t let you. I’ll...I won’t...they…” I watch as she stands up, stomps heavily towards the wall and slams her fist into it, right under the hole that Bruce had left the night before. The hole she punches isn’t as big as Bruce’s, but her fist travels deeper into the drywall. I jump down onto my good paw and hobble over to where she is standing, her body heaving with her furious temper coursing through it.

“Hey! Doc, stop! Stop!” I yell, trying to break through to her. She flinches at my touch and spins around, the sudden motion almost knocking me back onto my tail. I have to take a few shaky steps, some of them on my bad paw.

Doc manages to hear my pained yipping and shakes herself awake.

“Ad-er...Winter, sit! You’re going to hurt yourself!” she demands as she follows me back to the bed. Her large paw supports my back and makes sure I don’t plummet to the floor again. I flop back down onto the bed, Doc’s paw refusing to let go of me.

“Doc, it’s okay. I’ll be okay…” I try to tell her as I pull myself back into a sitting position. She responds with a loud snarl and a few intimidating clicks of her tongue.

“NO! This is sick! You’re just a kit!” she storms into my face. I grimace and lean away slightly from the spittle flying from her muzzle.

“At least they didn’t skin me!” I yell back. She blinks hard and stares at me, trying to stay angry but deflating quickly. The memory of me being dragged from her room to my death flashes in her eyes and she has to abandon her fury.

“I KNOW! But...kid, you...they’re going to make you fuck! God, this is so wrong! Are you even old enough to make kits? Shit, they better not…” Her temper simmers down but she apparently still has plenty to say.

“I might be…” I answer, my face growing hot. Truthfully, I had been...trying things out for the past year or so. At first I didn’t know what I was doing and it was kind of spooky, how my body reacted to my own touch. But now, I’m pretty sure I could perform if I needed to. At least, maybe I could. I’ve never been around anyone else when I did it. Having someone even in the same room, especially if they are actively participating with me, might throw me way off.

“So you can crank it?” she asks bluntly. I reel back in embarrassment, not expecting how calm she is able to stay while saying those words. Her eyes drill into me, not letting me even consider the possibility of lying. But I don’t need to.

“Y-...yeah...I guess…” I stutter, my ears lowered shamefully against my head.

“And you can finish? Like, something comes out when you do it?” The way she asks these questions is so weird; it’s like she’s not aware that she’s asking me if I touch myself. It’s worse because I know exactly what she’s referring to, even with her vague vocabulary.

“Yes!” I shout, backing into the bed slightly. Doc gives me a wild-eyed stare for way longer than what is probably necessary. And just like that, she snaps back to reality and lets out a sigh. Her large paw pats me on the shoulder, only calming me a little. I make sure to keep my lower regions out of sight and out of mind. My emerging sexuality is the last thing I want to talk about with a mammal I look up to as a guardian.

My ears feel so hot that I think I might actually be coming down with a fever.

“Sorry, kid, I’m just worried about you. Lost you once already, don’t want to go about my days stressing about you shooting blanks into those vixens. Right now, breeding seems to be the only reason they want to keep you. For now, just...just soldier on, little trooper. I know it’s going to be rough...I know you’ll have to do disgusting things...but for now, it’s the only way. I swear to you, WHEN we get you out of here, it’ll all have been worth it.”

“I’m taking everyone with me. Everyone,” I mumble, the fire of determination brewing in my gut again. I don’t know why Doc got so daring all of a sudden, but I like it. Just the thought of getting every captive out of this hell...the image of us storming the doors and taking down the vicious monsters that locked us all here…

It inspires me.

I WANT to help.

I NEED to help.

Maybe me getting taken like this shouldn’t be all about my loss.

Maybe...maybe this is happening so that I can do some good in the world.

Can I do anything? Sure I can, I can fight. Bruce’s mangled facial features are proof of that.

I can’t fight mammals like Felix, I’m sure. I’m not as good against larger opponents as my father was. But maybe I don’t have to be the one to fight them. If I can cooperate with the other residents in this farm, then just maybe…

I am going to need way more information before I can start forming any kind of plan.

What’s the layout of this place? What doors need keys to get through? How many mammals work here as guards and staff? What other kinds of animals are actually bred here for their fur?

Too many unknowns. For now, I’ll have to just go with their plans for me.

And speak of the devil, their plan for me happens to walk through the door with an awkward smile on her long, white muzzle. A lollipop stick juts out from between her teeth, the candy part having long since been chewed away. Now she just grinds away at the stick part, maybe to pass the time. I doubt she actually enjoys the taste.

Tess walks closer to us, having stopped when she saw Doc there looking at my paw. The wolverine doesn’t seem to notice her presence. The arctic wolf is wearing a loose-fitting grey t-shirt and black sweatpants, a much more comfortable outfit than her choices yesterday. As a result, her profile just seems more relaxed in general. She looks like she’s about to go out for a jog. Or maybe sit down at a coffee shop and write a screenplay.

Tess silently shuffles over to my bed, towering over Doc so that she can watch her work. Doc had already put most of her tools away, and is now wrapping my paw and ankle with a support brace. The wolf chews some more on her stick before speaking up and breaking the silence.

“So how is he?”

“FUCK!” Doc barks and twists around, holding a leftover piece of medical tape in her paw like a weapon. Tess leaps back, giving the startled wolverine some space. As Doc’s heart rate slows back down and she stops looking like she’s about to eat someone, her eyes fall on the much taller wolf and narrow suspiciously.

“Tess.”

“Doc.”

“What do you want?”

“I WANT to know how Winter is doing. I requested your help, after all.” Tess doesn’t seem to be intimidated by the cold shoulder Doc is suddenly giving her.

“Oh, so that was you? Huh, surprised you had the time,” Doc spits at her. Tess lifts an eyebrow but chooses not to question that last statement.

“Look, I got work to do with him. Is he good or not?” Tess sticks her paws in her pockets and retains her relaxed posture even in the face of the obviously irritated woman glaring up at her. The fur on the back of Doc’s neck bristles suddenly.

“Oh, that’s what you call work? Dropping your pants for kits a quarter your size? Don’t let me keep you.” Doc throws the rest of her supplies into her bag and marches towards the door, blatantly slamming into the taller mammal as she does so. Tess stumbles to the side and drops the lollipop stick, the tiny piece of rolled up paper falling to the carpet and getting stuck. The drastic change of tension in the room has me folding my ears to my head and curling into myself to hide from it. I don’t want to be around any more fighting right now. Especially between two mammals who have shown to have my best interests at heart.

“Woah, hold-”

“He’s got a sprain, so if you got somewhere to take him, you’ll just have to carry him. And don’t call for me if he ends up making it hard for you to walk later. You’ll just have to deal with it,” Doc says sarcastically and slams the door behind her. Outside, I can hear another voice, this one stirring up negative emotions in my gut again. When I hear it, all I can think about is the image of my father getting kicked into a wall back when we were being attacked in the alley.

Lex.

Big scary black bear must have been waiting outside the door for Doc to finish.

Maybe the brief sounds of argument kept him from showing his face. I doubt he wants to see me again anyway, if he even knows I’m in here.

The two have a quick muffled exchange of words before I hear them both stomping away. Tess remains staring straight forward at the far wall, her teeth busy chewing on the inside of her cheek. She looks like she wants to say something so badly, but chooses not to. Even with Doc gone, I can still feel the tension stifling the air around me. She’s just...standing there.

I slowly uncurl myself from my ball of white fluff and look up at her. My slight movements snap her out of her funk and bring her back to the world of the living.

“Oh, hey Winter,” she greets half-heartedly. I flick my ears up at her and tilt my head. She throws her paws up to her face suddenly and squeals.

“NOOOOOOOooo. Don’t do that. Don’t be cute. Gah!” she whines. My response is to just look up at her like she’s crazy. Beneath me on the bed, my paw stings painfully. It also itches a little bit. Or that could just be my body craving that stuff again, I can’t really tell the difference.

“So, yeah, like...I want to get started with your training as soon as possible, as much as I know neither of us want to. The arctic fox season is about to start and I don’t want them thinking you’re worthless if you freeze up and can’t perform. They don’t have much patience when it comes to males. It’s either make kits or make coats. Sorry, I know that’s dark, it’s just a thing they say,” Tess explains all at once. My face heats up as I realize that I’m about to go through my first sexual experience. My body trembles anxiously and my paws instinctively cover my lower section protectively.

I’m not ready for this.

I don’t know what to expect.

Tess sees me defaulting into a defensive posture and waves her paws from side to side, shaking her head at the same time.

“No, no! Not that yet. We have some time before we actually...you, know. First, I want to show you around to a few of the places that will be important for you to know. Don’t want you getting lost and ending up in Lucy’s room or something.”

“Lucy?” I ask, slightly perking up out of my shy retreat.

“Oh, she’s just a tiger here. Don’t have to worry about her as long as you know which room not to go into,” Tess explains away.

“Oh...okay…”

We’re both silent for a few awkward moments. My paws lower from my lap and I sit casually on the bed, unsure of what to do next. I’d normally jump up and follow, but my paw’s wrappings are going to make that pretty much impossible. I don’t even have any crutches to use.

“Oh! Right,” Tess exclaims and moves closer to me with her arms outstretched. The sudden motion and closeness of the action startles me and brings a few recent memories bubbling to the forefront of my mind.

Claws!

Without thinking, I yelp and slide away from her on the bed, my eyes wide and focused. Is she dangerous? Why is she reaching for me? My chest tingles painfully with the memory of the last time I felt claws on me. The tremble coursing through my limbs is even worse now.

Tess backs up with her paws raised submissively.

“Woah, woah. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Guess I should have picked you up slower, huh?” she asks me gently. Her voice rattles around my head, trying to shut off all of the tripped security alarms that are blaring. I force myself to relax, though the tremble doesn’t go away entirely.

She wasn’t leaning down to attack me.

She just wanted to pick me up to carry me. Like Doc said she would have to.

I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.

My paws itch a bit though.

Tess slides her paws under my much smaller form and lifts me to her chest, much more gently this time. Wow, I really am like a quarter of her size. The joys of being one of the smaller kinds of one of the smaller species. At least I’m not a fennec, though. Those guys have it the hardest.

I look around me again, perplexed by the height. Her chest is still as soft and comforting as it was last night. Why was I just afraid of her? She had never shown any intent to harm me, yet I had once again reverted back to my fight-or-flight simply because someone got too close. Whatever is going on with me, I’m going to have to learn how to control it. Otherwise, I might make the wrong impression on someone important if my first reaction to them is to threaten to bite them or worse.

The wolfess carrying me expertly flicks the lights off with her shoulder and brings us out of the room. The sight of the hallway and the lingering scent of burnt flesh invade my senses and I find myself hiding my face in her chest to shut out the memories.

Ash died here not even a day ago. If this area was under normal ownership, this part of the casino would probably be under heavy investigation right now for murder. There’d be a chalk outline on the carpet and police tape everywhere. The rooms on this whole floor would probably be closed to the public.

As we walk, we don’t have much to say. Tess explains that the symbols on the door are actually representative of the different species’ mating seasons, though I have no idea how to read any of them. She seems to know them by heart, though.

Besides that, most of the doors are the same throughout the floor. I can hear multiple voices coming from some of them, and my youthful mind is almost cracked when I start hearing moaning coming from an entire section of the floor. At least ten different rooms are supposedly full of mammals in the dead heat of their mating seasons. There’s not just moaning, either. Some of them let out excited barks, some let out shrill screams and I even hear some growling. The growling is followed by the sounds of claws scampering on carpet and furniture being knocked over. I have NO desire to see what is going on behind those doors.

One of the doors we walk by isn’t even wood. It’s made out of solid metal, and even the metal has gashes on it. A shiver runs down my spine as my eyes take in the sight of what is probably enough backstory to fill ten horror movies. Tess catches me looking and turns us so that I can see it a bit better.

“That’s Lucy’s room, the one I was talking about. Just...don’t go in there. Please. As you can see, it’s impossible to confuse for any other room,” Tess tells me while walking backwards away from the terrifying-looking vault. A faint, low growl echoes in the hallway, originating directly from the room in question. I swallow hard and shove my head back into her chest fur. She lets out a pleasant chuckle and shuffles a bit faster away from the malicious entity occupying that room. Obviously ‘Lucy’ doesn’t want us anywhere near her and I’m not going to fight her on it. Avoiding her will grant me more time away from the afterlife.

We make a turn at the end of the seemingly endless hallway and enter a more open area where there are a few vending machines and some older-looking chairs. The machines appear to be empty and probably haven’t been used in a long time. The chairs are covered in claw marks and half the filling is spilling out onto the floor around them. Beyond the chairs is a much newer-looking metal door that resembles the one that Bruce had to unlock when we arrived at Doc’s underground station.

We veer away from the door and enter another hallway. This one is almost identical to the one we had just walked out of, except mirrored. The strange symbols line the doors just like the ones before. This hallway seems a bit brighter though, like it’s better taken care of more recently. There are also no moaning sounds, but that doesn’t mean it’s quiet.

Oh no.

This hallway, even in the absence of visible occupants, is basically bustling in comparison to my hallway. Every door has a multitude of voices coming from behind them. I can hear actual conversations going on between entirely high-pitched, feminine voices. Most of the voices I hear are light and casual, though I hear an argument once or twice.

All of the voices sound like they’re female. What’s going on in this hall?

Tess reads my mind.

“This is pretty much the female side of the breeding halls,” she states.

“Huh? But...what about Lucy? And I definitely heard a few females...yelling back in the other hall,” I inquire. Tess bites her lip and tries to word her response for me to understand.

“Lucy...is a special case. She has been there since before the two sexes were kept apart and they’re not about to move an entirely custom-built room just for organizational purposes. And the others, well...we’ll...get to that, eventually,” Tess explains, though I can tell she’s struggling to spare my innocence. 

We eventually come to a section of the hallway that has the same symbols as my door. A few doors into the section and we come to a stop. I can hear a bunch of voices behind the door, a few of them even laughing. Laughter is something I had fully expected to never hear again...at least since I saw what they did to Ash.

The light-hearted sound brings me some hope for what is to come.

“Okay, we’re here,” Tess says tiredly.

“Where is here?”

“This is the Vixen Room. Well, one of them, at least. This one is for the arctic vixens in particular. The red foxes, grey foxes and fennecs have their own rooms.

Oh shit, there ARE fennecs here. Poor little guys.

“So these are…” I try to ask the rest of my question but it just won’t come out. Tess waits for me to finish until it becomes obvious that I won’t be able to.

“Yeah, these are the vixens you’ll be seeing. You’ll be their tod,” Tess fills in the blanks.

My heart skips a beat. I’m about to see the captive foxes that they’re going to force me to make kits with. I’m going to know all of these strangers intimately at some point soon. How am I supposed to feel about this? I was always told by the other students at school that having sex was supposed to be the greatest thing ever. I’m sure a bunch of them would kill to be in front of a room of females just waiting for them. But that was all just childish talk.

I’m not looking forward to having sex.

I’m terrified.

Nobody but my parents and doctor have ever seen me fully naked. I’m not comfortable with my body, especially now that it’s going to be covered in gruesome scars. What if I can’t do what they want me to? What if I can’t have kits? Will they just throw me away like they did Ash? My life is going to hinge on me being able to do something that no kit my age should ever have to do.

I want to run. It doesn’t matter that the voices are light and cheerful. If I can’t give them the kits they want, will they hate me? Will I be risking their lives as well if I make Boss think that they’re no longer able to have kits? I don’t want to cause any more death.

“Well...here we go. Just...let me do the introducing, okay? They’re a good pack of girls, but they can be a bit overwhelming. They might get loud when they see you, okay? Don’t freak out, they won’t hurt you. I won’t let go of you until you say so, got it?” Tess asks me firmly. I look up at her serious expression and give her a quick nod.

If I don’t just get it over with, I doubt I will ever have the courage to on my own.

“Okay, Winter, here we go,” Tess says to me before she shifts me to one of her arms so that she can reach down with a key to unlock the door. Huh, so these doors are actually locked? I wonder why the doors on the male side are all unlocked.

Tess clicks the lock to the side and slips the key back into her pocket, where it makes a metallic ping sound. She must have a bunch more keys in there.

Slowly, almost stealthily, she turns the knob to the side and pushes it open. The sounds of conversation become louder as the barrier is removed. Words that were indecipherable mumbles earlier are now able to be made out. My ears get to work flicking around, trying to take in every sound around me like my life depends on it. Just as I start latching onto random bits of chatter, the room goes quiet.

The only sound in the room comes from Tess closing the door behind us.

My fur rises all along my body. Every alarm in my mind is going off, telling me to get the hell out of this room. Even from my place far above the height of a normal fox, I feel like I have at least twenty strangers towering above me.

All eyes are on me. I can feel it.

I bury my face back into Tess’s chest and a chorus of ‘Aww’s ring into my ears, which flick down to muffle the volume. I feel Tess carrying me a few steps further into the room. Numerous voices greet her at the same time, creating a hum of noise that stops me from thinking.

“Hey, Tess.”

“Who’s that?”

“New girl?” one of them pipes up, silencing the others. They seem to snap out of the cheery attitude as the reality comes back to bite them. Another mammal is trapped here and even if they gained another roommate, some parents in the world above lost a child.

“Not...exactly. Erm...everyone, this is Winter,” Tess says loud enough for every set of ears in the room to hear. I don’t know how many that is; I still haven’t looked out from my hiding spot in the wolf’s chest fluff. The occupants are still a mystery to me.

Tess lowers me a bit so that I’m forced away from my seclusion. I whine a bit in protest and blink up at the bright lights filling the room. As my face and shoulders are exposed to the vixens in the room, a chorus of gasps fill the air.

I squint through the glaring lights and try to take in my surroundings.

As I thought, there are around twenty vixens packed in around Tess, all looking up at me curiously. Their coats range from almost white to pure grey, and they all appear to be roughly the same height, but I notice one thing about them in particular.

They’re all beautiful.

These are all young adult vixens in their prime, looking like they could be models. Is that why they were taken? Is being pretty all it takes to lose your right to a free life in Zootopia? A sickening pit forms in my gut as I look out among the crowd of eyes.

Not all of the foxes are here to see me. I notice a few younger looking vixens sitting in the back looking out of place and dead to the world. The three of them are almost pure white and can’t be over the ages of eighteen. They look only a few years older than me.

I bet they’ve been here the shortest amount of time, except for me of course.

“What? Tess...that’s a boy. That’s a KIT. What’s going on?” one of the grey vixens asks. She seems to be the one chosen to speak for the group and the others wait patiently for Tess to answer. Tess bites her cheek and prepares to have to explain the situation.

“Like I said, this kit here is Winter. Yes, he’s a boy. He’s...going to be your tod from now on,” she says with a great deal of pain in her voice. The memory of Ash flashes through my mind as I try to gauge all of their reactions. Was Ash the one they all mated with before I got here?

“He...hold on, what about Ash?” the grey one speaks again. A troubled murmur breaks out through the group, and I can see the eyes aren’t looking at me anymore. The vixens look at each other worriedly and try to come up with a possible explanation.

“Sorry, girls, but Ash...isn’t here anymore…” Tess sighs. The whispers become shouts and every vixen tries to get Tess’s attention at the same time. “Girls! Girls, please! I know this is sudden and doesn’t make sense, but please calm down!”

I can hear a couple of the foxes start to sob in the back of the group. My heart aches for every mammal who Ash’s death is negatively affecting.

Except for Bruce.

Ash must have been a good mammal all around, with how many captive animals in the farm seem to miss him so greatly. The memory of him pleading for his life after seeing me only makes me feel guilty again. I try to back away from the vixens, not wanting to face more animals I hurt just by existing. Tess doesn’t let me escape and makes sure I’m exposed to everyone in the room.

“Why? What did Ash do wrong?” asks the leader of the pack. Tess looks around at each one of them, trying to buy herself a few moments to gather her thoughts. Even the few downtrodden foxes in the back of the room are looking up at us now. I notice that one of them is shaped differently than the other two. She’s not fat, at least from what I can tell. It’s almost like she has a bunch of extra skin that is just hanging off of her form. I’ve never seen someone like her before and honestly she’s fascinating me. She’s like if a fox hid inside of a snowmam and only stuck their limbs and head out.

Our eyes meet and I realize that she had been staring right at me. When she sees me looking back, she averts her gaze and hides behind one of the other vixens. I can still see her fluffy white body peeking out from either side of her friend.

“Ash didn’t do anything, Laura. It was apparently a combination of Bruce fucking up and who it was he took on his last run,” Tess answers carefully. The grey one, apparently named Laura, mulls over the answer in her head while the others watch silently. A few of them have chosen to take their places on the many couches lining the walls so that they can express their emotions in semi-privacy.

“I’m guessing this kit is the one he took?” Laura asks finally. Tess nods and lowers me even closer to the ground. I’m still in a lying position facing away from them and would really rather stay that way.

“Winter, can you stand? I’m going to set you down now,” Tess whispers softly to me. I groan to her but nod anyway. My eyes dart down, examining the floor beneath me. It’s the same exact kind of carpet as my room has. She drops me low enough for my good paw to touch the surface of the carpet. Once she’s certain I have my balance, she lets go of me and I’m able to stand to my full height.

Oh, wow, they’re all taller than me.

As I turn to face everyone from my own point of view for the first time, I accidentally expose my bare chest to all of them. The shocking sight of my wounds becomes the new target of obsession in the room. The vixens who can see my scars all let out worried screams and rush towards me. The ones who can’t see me are drawn closer by the sounds that the other ones make. Before I’m able to get used to my surroundings, I’m immediately rushed by the entire pack of female foxes. They’re all larger than me and even though they’re very pretty, they still have claws and teeth that would be able to tear me open all over again.

Are they mad at me? Are they trying to kill me because I caused Ash’s death? Their claws are reached out towards me, almost close enough to dig into my skin. They’re talking but I can’t hear what they’re saying. All I see is over twenty sets of teeth clicking together as they charge closer to me.

My instincts take over again and I take off like a limping bullet.

I find a path around them and go for it, my pace limited because of the brace on my paw. A few surprised yelps come from the pack of vixens as my smaller body maneuvers around them expertly. It helps me that they aren’t actively trying to catch me anymore once I take off running. They back away from me and stay where they are to watch my path.

I don’t stop. It could be a trap so that some of the hidden vixens can sneak up on me.

My eyes snap to a couch with a bit of a gap behind it. There!

My good leg and both arms pull my body into the area behind the couch, which is barely big enough for me to fit in. There’s no way the other foxes would be able to reach me back here. For the moment, I’m safe.

I let my ears swivel around to take in any details. With the couch blocking me from the outside world, most of the sounds are muted somewhat. I can feel my body heaving as I try to catch my breath. No matter how much air I take in, it never seems to be enough to satisfy my lungs. My heart is racing so fast that I can’t even make out the pattern. My mouth is dry, probably from holding it open and sucking in air through it. My eyes dart around, trying to catch any hints of movement from my place behind the couch.

“What the hell was that about?” Laura’s voice enters my head but I don’t react to it. She’s one of the ones trying to get me.

“Shit, shit, sorry. Shouldn’t have put him down until I warned you girls about that. He’s been through a lot the last week or so. Him and his dad got picked up by Bruce’s group and his father didn’t make it. He’s been super skittish since then,” Tess tries to explain to everyone from the other side of the room.

I can hear soft steps starting to approach my couch. They’re coming for me.

My stitches hurt.

I don’t want my chest cut open again.

“Who did that to him?” I hear an unfamiliar voice ask.

“His dad,” Tess answers, having to cut off the growing number of voices again before they overtake her. “He did it so they couldn’t use his fur. He saved his life.”

The room is quiet except for some muffled crying.

A shadow appears from under the edge of the couch. I squeeze myself as far away from the enclosing assailants as possible but another shadow shows up on the other side too.

I’m forced to huddle in the very middle so that I’m unreachable from either side. More and more shadows appear but don’t get any closer than the first few. What am I supposed to do? They’re just sitting there waiting for something. I can’t run; they’re all around me now.

“Winter?” A familiar voice asks from above me. I don’t trust it, it could be one of the attacking foxes. My eyes don’t even glance up at her.

“Hey, little guy. You okay?” another voice asks from my side. I turn to it and bare my teeth. Laura jumps back a bit from the spot she was looking in on me from. More and more voices attempt to draw me closer, but I know better. They just want to hurt me again.

The voices all drown each other out and become background noise. They’re just an annoying hum that echoes around my head and gives me a headache. With a terrified whine, I curl around myself and hold my ears down with my paws. I don’t want to listen to them anymore. Nothing they are saying is worth listening to.

I lay there for at least half an hour, just trying to retreat into my mind. The voices eventually stop trying to coax me out. The couch moves a little, but a chorus of voices disrupts it and makes it stop.

Finally, some quiet. I just want to disappear into the silence and never come out.

My lungs still crave air so I oblige them.

A strong sense of fatigue is starting to plague me, but I’m too scared to calm down.

What?

What’s that sound?

It sounds like...humming.

Wait…

I know this tune.

This is the same song my mom used to sing me when I went to bed every night.

Mom?

I pull myself up, my ears focusing on the source of the song. The pleasantly warm vibrations lead me to the edge of the gap. When I sense that I’m not being attacked anymore, I allow myself to squeeze out from behind my hiding spot. I walk on all fours towards the singing, holding my bad paw off the ground so that I don’t hurt it more.

My eyes stay shut. I don’t want to see mom right now, but I need her. How am I going to tell her what happened to dad? It’s all my fault.

I reach the source of the humming and my paws meet warm fur. Without really knowing who I’m touching, I crawl onto them and put my face into their chest fur. Soft, squishy skin surrounds my face and makes me feel safer than I have in weeks.

The humming continues. A few other soft coos can be heard around me but I ignore them. I feel a paw stroking my ears softly. A tired whine escapes my throat, but it’s followed by a relaxed sigh. The feeling of claws running through my fur doesn’t even bother me.

I wrap both of my arms around the warm body holding me, my arms sinking deeply into the fur. The air around me smells pleasant but a bit salty, like someone had been crying recently.

The bright lights above me start to dim out, like they’re being blocked one at a time. The lack of light on my eyelids mixed with the humming and a warm body to hug lull me into a trance.

The fatigue from my panic attack starts hitting me and my mind finally allows my body to relax enough to shut down. I want to stay awake to listen to more of the familiar song, but I’m just so sleepy.

I feel more and more paws rubbing my pelt softly, but it doesn’t trigger any alarms.

Not anymore.

My mom is here and she will protect me.

Nothing can hurt me here.

It’s just another night before school and my mom is singing me to sleep while playing with my ears. Nothing is wrong with the world and I’m only a room away from my sister.

My dad is downstairs listening to his music and the faint smell of fish still lingers from dinner.

I already got all of my homework done so I wouldn’t have to work on it tomorrow at school during study hall.

A giant yawn escapes my lips.

The lights go out.

Sleep overtakes me once again.

Just another night.


	11. This is Wrong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter includes explicit sexual content involving minors. This is not written to be sexy. This is written to be horrible but necessary for survival.

Warm.

Very warm.

TOO warm.

Why am I so warm?

The itching tingle of my body overheating stirs me from my sleep. I’m still in my room, right? I have to be, I remember my mom singing me to sleep. The echo from my dad’s music is still humming in my head.

Of course I’m home.

But everything is dark. Did I make a den out my blankets again? Strange, though, these blankets don’t look, smell or feel like mine. The material wrapped around my body is much scratchier and thick. Not to mention it’s purple instead of blue. Whose blankets are these? And...whose BED is this? Wait...this isn’t even a bed. This is a couch.

Where am I?

I try to move, but my limbs are wrapped tightly to my body with the purple sandpaper that dares to call itself a blanket. Some tossing and turning loosens the offending bedspread enough for me to pull my paws up to my face.

Ouch!

What the heck? Why is my chest so sore?

Those are stitches.

Stitches. Oh.

“Mom…?” I squeak out, my voice trembling. I was home! I was out! This place, these scars, last week, they are just supposed to be a bad dream! The casino and the farm aren’t real!

Some muffled whispers catch my attention. They’re coming from outside the blanket that covers me. Somehow, whatever the blanket is made out of is thick enough to block out the sound and light almost completely.

In my head, I try desperately to recall all the details of exactly where I am and what is going on. I swear I heard at least a dozen different voices just then. Who is watching me?

With a trembling paw, I slowly reach up to the edge of the blanket and pull it down as slowly as possible. The light pours in, breaking my illusion that it might still be my room. Unfamiliar scents invade my mind at the same time, drawing me closer to the light. I want to stay hidden in the dark, but I need that last mental boot to wake me the rest of the way up.

I pull the blanket down from over my head and squint up at the blinding light. The strange voices start back up, not bothering to stay whispers anymore. When my eyes finally adjust to the illuminated room around me, the reality of where I am hits me like a train.

I’m still in the vixen room.

The twenty-odd vixens are all looking at me.

My mom is nowhere in sight.

My sister is absent.

My dad is still dead.

An urge to cry out in anguish tugs at me, but I’m able to ignore it. Instead, I flop my head back onto the pillow that someone had provided for me and just take in the surroundings. The vixens around me are just as I remember them. The room, however, is still unknown. I hadn’t actually gotten a chance to take it in when Tess had introduced me. All my senses were busy focusing on the other foxes and trying to decide whether or not they were a threat.

The room itself is a bit bigger than mine, but is way more cramped, and not just because there are over twenty mammals residing here. The walls are lined with couches and beds, to the point that it’s a surprise anyone can move around at all. The beds are all bunk towers, with maybe five beds stacked on top of each other per unit. I’ve never even seen bunks like that before.

There is no kitchen like in my room, but that might have just been because of the limited space. The layout of the walls is pretty much identical to mine. Where there is a fridge and table in my room, this room has enough beds for a dozen medium-sized mammals. Because of this, all of the beds are super small and don’t look comfortable in the slightest.

The couch in the middle of the room is the largest and is facing the couch that I’m currently laying on. Most of the occupants of the room are gathered on the big couch, sitting in different positions all over it. A big blanket is being shared by the ones able to fit on the couch cushions, while the others have to settle for resting on the back of the couch or on the armrests. I notice for the first time that they all have the same kind of black collar that is currently strapped to my neck as well. We’re all in the same boat, apparently.

All eyes are still on me.

Some of them convey pity. Some of them glint with curiosity.

But all of them are bright and pretty.

Even the emerald green eyes of the tall arctic wolfess standing over the back of the couch, looking down at me with concern.

“Tess…” I mumble softly. My body tries to move out of the stifling heat of the covers, but a fierce itch starts up in my body again. The trembling it causes in me forces me to roll off the couch and fall to the floor with a ‘thud.’ The vixens exclaim different things as they watch me collide with the carpet, but their voices can’t overwhelm the ringing in my ears.

Facedown on the floor, I can feel the vibrations in the floor from the incoming steps. A familiar set of paws scoops me off of the carpet and brings me to the same furry white chest fluff I’ve come to know as safe.

I hug Tess tightly, trying my hardest to ignore the returning sensation of my body craving its new favorite poison. I feel a knowing huff blow down onto me from above, a sign that Tess can feel my movements and knows what is going on.

Gravity forsakes me for a moment as Tess plops herself down onto the same couch I had been sleeping on. I let out a little ‘oof’ as she lands, but I don’t feel any pain. She’s holding me securely enough to keep me from falling.

But the itch persists.

I look around, trying to figure out what she’s doing. But Tess answers my question for me as I feel the tiny sharp tips of her claws part my fur. A jolt of fear sparks through my body, but the sensation that follows is enough to mute my distress.

She’s itching my back. By dragging her claws backwards through my fur, she’s keeping her claws from slicing me open while at the same time providing me with an intense feeling of relief. I can actually feel the itch start to subside. How is she doing this?

My eyes, having shut the moment her claws touched me, open again to find that we’re surrounded by the entire cast of vixens. They’re gathered around us, looking in on me to make sure that I’m okay. I can’t suppress the urge to bolt; the memory of what I was feeling during my last panic attack is still pretty fresh. So many claws coming for me…

I feel a paw place itself on my head, scratching at my ears in a very careful, soothing motion. I look over to find the one vixen that didn’t make me feel scared.

The one with the extra skin. She’s giving me a small smile as she scratches, not caring that the other vixens are giving her concerned glances. Together, Tess and the skinny vixen soothe me for what feels like hours. I know it’s only about ten minutes, but I wish it was hours.

The itching goes away completely, to my total shock and awe.

She made sure not to scratch at my chest, but the rest of my top half got the complete scratchy package. My back, arms and neck were the major hotspots so they spent the most time on those. I’m putty in their paws by the time they finish.

My tongue hangs loosely out of my mouth, a sign of total relaxation. I don’t even mind anymore that a room full of older, beautiful vixens are watching me and that I don’t have a shirt on.

“Mind filling us in a bit, Tess?” I hear Laura’s voice inquire from somewhere on the couch. I’m too relaxed to bother looking in their direction. Another minty breath washes over me as Tess sighs.

“Withdrawal. I think Doc gave him some peace when she was patching him up and now he’s hooked. Poor kit completely loses control of his body and starts itching like crazy,” Tess tells the crowd of worried females. A few more sympathetic whines echo out from the audience.

“Geez, how old is he? Being addicted so young…” Laura asks again.

“Twelve,” Tess answers bluntly. Laura chokes on her tongue and the rest of the room erupts into shouting. Some voices cry out over how I’m much too young to be here and how kits are supposed to be off-limits for the snatchers. Other voices demand to know if I’m even able to breed at my age. A couple voices are just loud screams of despair with no actual words thrown in.

It’s just more noise to give me a headache. I drop my ears against my head to muffle the sensory overload, and by looking over to my left, I can see the skinny vixen doing the same to her ears. She even has to hold hers against her head with her paws. Her eyes are squinted tight and she’s trembling a bit.

Huh.

I guess I’m not the only one around here who gets overwhelmed by noise.

Tess and Laura do their best to get the crowd back under control. The wolf sets me down on the couch and stands up, walking her way around the room and trying to calm down the numerous shouting vixens.

The moment she gives up her seat, the shapely vixen to my left shuffles over and plops herself down right next to me. It’s a bit of a sudden invasion of space that would normally have me bolting for the nearest dark crawlspace, but her general presence and aroma has an immediate calming effect on me.

It’s comforting and it’s familiar. Had she been really close to me recently?

The last thing I remember about her was that she shied away from me when we made eye contact. Now all of a sudden she’s hovering over me and petting my ears like we’ve been best friends for years. She’s sitting with her paws folded calmly in her lap, close enough for me to feel the very edge of her coat. But she’s not pressing up against me. She’s content to watch Tess try to silence the room around us to little avail. Laura is much more blunt with her strategy, choosing to simply clamp her paws around one wailing muzzle at a time.

I look over at the fox sitting next to me. She’s wearing a very loose-fitting yellow shirt that looks like it’s meant to be worn by an mammal much larger than her. I can still see bits of the shirt pressed out from the shape of her overhanging skin though. Her bottom section is covered by a pair of dark grey lounge pants with hearts covering them.

Her clothes don’t even begin to match, but that’s okay with me. I’m more fascinated with the fox. Why is she like this? What caused her to have so much skin? Being this close to her, I can definitely see that she isn’t just overweight. Her face is no chunkier than the other vixens in the room. Her eyes are a bright blue, even brighter than mine. Picture the clearest ice water and enhance the saturation a few times over and that’s almost as pretty as her eyes.

She doesn’t look back at me or say anything, but I can hear her softly humming a gentle tune.

Wait…

This is mom’s song.

During my panic attack, before I passed out, I heard this song being hummed to me. I thought it was my mother at the time, but it couldn’t have been. My mother isn’t in here with us, thank god. So if it wasn’t mom, then it had to be this vixen.

But...I cuddled her super hard if that’s the case! Oh geez, I might have squeezed this poor fox to the point of strangulation! She just sounded so familiar and smelled so safe…

“Sorry!” I blurt out to her before I’m able to stop myself. The vixen jumps a bit at the sudden vocalization and looks over at me. Her crystal-clear blue eyes examine my form, trying to make sure of something that I’m unaware of.

She gives me another small smile before putting her paw on my head and patting me once. With her response given, she turns her head back to the show taking place in front of us.

Guess she doesn’t talk much.

That’s fine, I like staying quiet as well.

I turn to look at the rest of the vixens and oh my god what is happening.

In the few brief moments it took me to examine the girl next to me and for us to have our little moment, the room has managed to turn itself into chaos. A group of vixens are holding onto Tess’s legs, making it almost impossible for her to go anywhere. Laura is currently buried under a pile of foxes still screaming at each other. A few of the rest of the vixens are darting around the couches, seemingly just tearing around the room to burn off some energy.

I have no idea.

“Is this normal?” I ask the air in front of me.

“Mhmm,” says the girl next to me. So she does speak...kinda.

We sit in what I wish was silence, but is actually deafening yips and curses. Tess looks around ready to give up, her face buried in her paws and her tail sagging to the floor. I can’t tell what Laura is doing; she’s completely covered in white and grey furred bodies. The only evidence that she is there at all is the constant muffled screaming coming from under the dog pile.

“Winter,” I say to the fox. Her ear flicks in my direction, letting me know that she’s listening.

“Ven,” she answers in just as many words. Ven, huh? Must be short for ‘Vanessa.’ I don’t even bother trying to trade last names, I know they’re all fake and useless here.

Well, Tess and Laura are out of ideas. I can’t even hear the arctic fox’s screaming anymore. Looks like it’s up to one of us to do something about this mess.

...I’d much rather just sit here next to Ven. She’s safe, quiet and knows some good tunes.

But I’m also getting tired of the noise. If only there was something to shut them up.

I have an idea, but it feels dirty. I don’t like emotionally manipulating others, even for the sake of my own sanity. But Tess and Laura need me, so duty calls, I guess.

Ven turns to watch me as I get down off the couch and walk closer to the group. She squints a bit, looking like she’s preparing to bolt if things go even further south. With a massive sigh, I approach the group and prepare to do my dirty deed.

I let out the one sound that I know will stop them dead in their tracks. The one sound that will draw the attention of every female of any species within a great radius…

I let out the cry of a wounded kit. It’s followed by some shrill, pained yips and a few whines thrown in for good measure.

Every ear in the vicinity shoots up and turns in my direction as the room goes completely silent. The vixens on Tess and Laura disperse, their attentions now fully focused on me. The tallest white ears in the room, belonging to the only wolf, fly straight up and she whips around to face me. Her eyes are wide and terrified, like she’s expected to see me disemboweled on the floor. But all she sees is me standing there with my hands in my pockets and my ears lowered.

Laura rolls into a sitting position and looks up at me, her eyes unfocused and her coat disheveled.

“What was-?! Who?!” she stutters. The rest of the vixens sniff around the area on high alert, their instincts forcing them to make sure the area is clear of danger before letting them calm back down.

Even Ven is standing now, looking me up and down to make sure that I’m not hurt. Once everyone is certain enough that I’m uninjured, a collective sigh releases into the room. I swear I can feel the entire room heat up for a brief moment.

“Winter…” Tess exhales as she walks up to me, her size dwarfing my own. “What was that? Why did you make those noises? Are you okay?” I nod up at her and wave my arm in a sweeping motion to gesture at the entire room at once. Tess looks around and takes note that there’s no more screaming and the vixens are calm once more. Laura is also looking around in disbelief now that she had her bearings back.

“I’m fine,” I tell all of the occupants of the room. Some of them are still on alert. “Just figured that could get you all to stop doing...whatever that was.”

The vixens look around at each other, realizing how childish that whole display must look like to an outsider. I see some lowered heads and some downward gazes spread throughout the group.

“Well...good thinking, I guess,” Laura huffs, still trying to catch her breath. She growls a bit at the vixens standing around her and they shuffle away shamefully. She leaps to her paws and stretches a bit, a few cracking sounds arising from her back.

“Listen, girls, this was just supposed to be a quick meet and greet so that you all wouldn’t be shocked when the season started and you found him in the tod room instead of Ash. I actually have a few more things to do with him for today,” Tess explains to everyone. The attention of the room switches to her, allowing me the chance to hop back up onto the couch next to Ven. She gives my back a rub which quickly turns into back scratches.

I lean away from her and turn my body so that she can access more of my back.

To my shame and embarrassment, I can’t stop my leg from kicking in joy as she finds the perfect spot to scratch. I didn’t even know I still did that!

She lets out a warm giggle and scratches a little harder.

“What do you need to do? Can’t you do it here?” one of the vixens asks.

“Yeah! We haven’t even gotten to introduce ourselves yet!” another agrees.

“Girls, please...it’s really not something that I want to do with a crowd. And I know for sure that he would rather be alone for it,” Tess vaguely reasons with them. This only draws more questions from the crowd, all spoken at once of course.

“What is it?”

“Tell us!”

“We are going to get to know him anyway!”

“I have to teach him his new job, okay?! He’s never done anything like this before!” Tess yells in frustration. The room goes quiet again and the vixens take time to digest what they’ve been told. A few come to the same conclusion, as evidenced by the lowering of their ears.

“You’re...going to fuck him?” Laura blurts out as it hits her. Tess sighs and rubs her eyes again. The crowd stays deathly silent at these words.

“I’m going to have to make sure he knows what he’s doing so that YOU can fuck him,” Tess spits. Laura recoils and starts sputtering like she’s been smacked in the face.

“Tess, I...I can’t! This is- no, I won’t fuck a kit!” Laura rants. She stomps right up to Tess and jabs her with a claw, having to crane her neck up to meet her eyes. Tess folds her arms and lifts a lip, exposing some of her razor-sharp teeth to the fox.

“What’s your other option? Do you WANT to give them a reason to replace him?” Tess retorts. The crowd around them watches with dread as they all start to realize what they’re going to have to do to me. What I’m going to have to do to them.

Boss isn’t just punishing Bruce.

He’s punishing Tess, Doc, Mina, Laura, Ven and everyone else in this room.

They’re all going to have to deal with being kitfuckers in order to keep everything running smoothly around here. Whether they like it or not, they’ll have to know what it feels like to sleep with a minor.

But in a place where skinning and electrocutions are the norm, who can really say what is horrifying in the face of survival?

“...No…” Laura finally admits. Her shoulders slumps and the dominant attitude she has been sporting peels away to reveal her shy interior. She wraps her paws around her arms and hugs herself as she takes a seat on the couch. Every few seconds, she glances my way but quickly looks down each time with a pained look.

The painful pit in my gut aches again as I see what my existence here is going to mean for these poor vixens. As much as I don’t want to have sex, I know these girls will be suffering as well. I can’t imagine the guilt that they’re going to feel when it does finally come time to taint the innocence of someone so young.

I want to be brave for them. If I can act like it doesn’t hurt me that much and that I know it’s for the best, then hopefully I can ease some of their burden.

“It’s fine, Tess. We can go,” I speak up, drawing the attention back to myself. A shiver shoots through me but I don’t let them see it. “I can just meet you all later, if that’s okay. I kinda want to get this all over with…”

Tess shoots me a thankful expression and walks over to me. Laura looks up at me with a look of slight approval on her face. The rest of the vixens voice their reluctance to let me go so soon but they don’t have much say in the matter. In terms of decision making, it’s already clear that Laura is the voice of the many and what she says goes.

Unless they get rowdy enough to pile on top of her, that is.

So as much as they want me to stay, they don’t stop Tess as she picks me up and holds me up to her chest. My paw aches from standing on it so I’m thankful for the sudden banishing of the ground.

I look around Tess’s arm and see Ven still on the couch, looking a little pensive herself. She notices me looking down at her and forces a smile. I use my free arm to wave down at her, which brightens her up enough to give me a genuine smile and a wave back.

She’s nice. I like Ven.

Before long, Tess carries me back out of the room full of vixens. I’ll get to know each one of them personally soon enough, for better or for worse. I just hope I’ll be able to live up to my expectations so that I don’t put their lives at risk.

The door shuts behind us and I hear the locks tumble back into place. The same hallways that we had passed to get here are moving by us again, but in the other direction. The time in her arms allows me to think about what is to come.

My face heats up and my heart starts racing as it hits me.

I rushed us out of the room so that we can go practice sex back in my room.

We’re going to do sex.

It’s not even that long of a walk back to the tod room, and each second that passes is one less until what is sure to be one of the most awkward, scarring moments of my young life. I know Tess doesn’t want to do it either, but I can’t help a slight tingle of fear towards her start to brew in my chest. She’s going to be the one doing it to me, after all.

I can tell that she’s glancing down at me every so often, especially once my body starts shaking.

“Itchy again?” she asks, though her voice isn’t genuine. I can tell that her casual, calm tone is just a mask to hide her discomfort with the upcoming activities.

“N-no...not really…” I stutter in response. She sucks in some air through her teeth and lets it back out.

“Listen, bud...we’re...going to take it slow, okay? I’ll do everything in my power not to overwhelm you and we have all day to get this down,” she tries to explain it calmly, but I can hear the tremble in her voice. She’s about three seconds away from crying. I nod up at her and force my body to sit still so that she will think her words helped.

It seems to work. She sniffles quickly and maintains her outward confidence despite the situation. I’m holding on myself, but just barely. Inside, a raging inferno of anxiety is burning away at my heart.

I know it’s necessary. I know I am supposed to want it. I know that it shouldn’t be that difficult.

So why is the concept of having sex so frightening to me?

I know basically nothing about what is going to be expected of me. But Tess is going to be the one guiding her and I know I can trust her.

Right?

She protected me from Bruce. I can trust her.

I can trust her.

I really want to trust her.

My eyes wander down to my partially naked body. I’ve been wandering around without a shirt this whole time. All it is going to take to expose my entire body to the world will be a quick sliding-down of my shorts. I won’t even have the few second delay of having to unbutton a shirt or loosen a belt buckle.

It’s just going to be a pull of elastic.

Then I look down to Tess. Her clothes are much more loose and casual than the clothes she wore yesterday. Was that on purpose? Did she wear these clothes with the intention of having them be easy to slide on and off?

I swallow a lump in my throat, trying not to eye the body of the wolf who I’m probably going to see naked fairly soon.

Too soon.

We’re at the door to my room already. I zoned out again and the time went by too fast! She doesn’t even have to unlock my door again so there’s barely any time left for me to prepare myself for what is to come.

The door clicks open and we step through. My room, still strange and unfamiliar to me, now carries implications in it that make it even more uncomfortable.

This is where it’s going to happen.

My heart tries to beat itself out of my chest as Tess sets me down on the bed as gently as she can. My paws immediately shoot to my groin, covering it instinctively. The motion does not go unnoticed by the wolf, but she does her best to hide the cringe that dares to cross her face.

I expect her to start pulling her clothes off or something. I try to keep my eyes on the bed, taking little peeks every so often to figure out what she’s doing.

To my surprise, she walks away from me and makes her way over to the fridge. My ears follow her movements and pick up the sounds of her rifling through the tall ice box. I hear the sound of the door shutting, followed by the tinkling of the silverware drawer.

This room has a silverware drawer?

I really need to explore my new home.

As I feel Tess walking back over to me, my fur bristles and my heart begins racing again. Is it finally going to happen? Is this it for me?

But instead of seeing a naked wolf, I just see a fully clothed Tess with a couple mysterious tins in her one paw and a couple water bottles clutched in her other paw.

Oh my god, food.

“Hungry?” she asks and I respond by reaching out for whatever she has for me. She lets out an amused chuckle and passes me the metal container.

It’s salmon filets. Sweet! They’re not as good as the freshly cooked stuff, of course, but they will do. I grab the fork she passed to me as well and dig into the juicy fish. A few drops of fishy liquid spill onto my lap as I devour the tiny meal but I don’t care. It’s salmon and I’m hungry!

Before I’ve even got a chance to enjoy the taste, the fish is gone and the tin is empty.

Except for the juice. That takes me a few more seconds to slurp down.

Another scoff catches my attention. I look to my side and see Tess watching me with a mixture of fear and fascination. It only just occurs to me that I may have gone a little bit savage on that salmon. My face is partially wet with fish juice and I may have splashed the bed a little bit.

“Wow, you were starving, huh?” she offers, trying to hold back a grin. My face grows hot and I look down, trying to find something to wash my muzzle off with. Tess, thinking ahead as always, offers me a sheet of paper towel she had grabbed without my knowing. I accept the paper gratefully and get to work cleaning myself off.

As I tidy up, Tess eats her own tin of salmon much more calmly and without the splash zone. She finishes quickly enough, since she is still a lot bigger than me, and takes a few sips of water to clear her throat.

“So…” she begins, her voice already wavering. My heart skips a beat and my ears flatten against my head.

Oh god. This is it.

“I want to make this as painless for you as a can, okay bud?” she says softly. I listen to her but don’t look at her. I can’t look at her, it’s too awkward. What am I supposed to respond with? I’m twelve and she’s like twenty or something. This whole thing is just so wrong.

“So what do you think would make you feel better about this? Is there anything I can do to make you feel comfortable at all? You know, just to make it a tiny bit easier…”

Through my conflicting battle of emotions, I try hard to think of something to say to her.

“It’s not going to be like the way a couple would do it, if that makes you feel any better, Winter. You don’t have to think about returning any favors or lasting a while. As a breeder, you only really have to worry about getting the job done as quickly as possible. All you have to do is finish and the job is done.”

Strangely, that does actually make me feel a bit better. It sounds like emotion is going to be taking a back seat to function for now. If both partners don’t want to be there, then what is there to feel bad about when it ends super quickly?

Though at the same time, the idea of treating the vixens like they’re just warm bodies to finish into just rubs me the wrong way. Despite my lack of knowledge about this whole thing, I really want to make them happy too. I kinda wanna get good at it for their sake.

That’s how it works with sex, right? Both participants getting something out of it? The vixen gets a kit that she doesn’t get to watch grow up and the tod gets to have sex with more vixens against his will until he gets replaced and electrocuted.

Wow, this place is going to mess me up for life, isn’t it?

I close my eyes tightly and try to think about her question some more. What would make me feel better about this? Well, for one, I don’t want to see her naked and she probably would rather not see me naked. I like the mental image I have of her from last night, when she held me and rocked me back and forth. Seeing her without clothes on would probably shatter that mental image forever and I wouldn’t be able to see her as a kind guardian anymore.

Then it occurs to me. Such an easy solution to that problem.

“Can we turn the lights off?” I ask weakly. Tess’s ears perk up as I finally speak after what must have been at least ten minutes of silence. She looks over to me, my simple idea striking her as genius. She actually perks up a little bit and her tail wags a few times.

“Yeah, yeah! We can do that,” she answers, sounding like a giant weight has been lifted off of her chest. As I expected, she wasn’t keen on seeing under my shorts either.

“Anything else?” she inquires as she stands up from the bed so she can flick the lightswitch. I lay down against the bed, trying to keep my heart from exploding. I don’t answer verbally, but I do reach for the pillow.

I hear a flick and the room is plunged into darkness.

As I do my best to get comfortable, I pull the pillow over my head and block out the sounds around me. Everything is totally dark for me now and I’m effectively deaf. My ears flop uselessly against the bed, hearing nothing but the sounds of my own heartbeat and quickened breathing.

It’s like my head exists in an entirely different universe than the rest of my body. I feel like I’m hiding, but I know that the rest of me is exposed to the outside world. The pillow becomes my den and my den is safe.

For a few tense seconds, nothing happens. But then I feel the mattress sink down as another body climbs onto it. My heart beats even harder. Without any noises to distract me, I’m left alone to ponder what Tess is seeing from outside the pillow. Hopefully it’s nothing, but I don’t really know how well arctic wolves can see in the dark.

The mattress moves as I feel Tess moving closer to me. The jostling in my stomach makes me feel like I’m about to throw up. I can even taste the salmon threatening to spill out of me. When I can feel the warmth from Tess’s breath on my legs and tail, she stops moving.

Another few tense seconds pass.

I feel her tap me on the leg, trying to get me to do something. What does she want?

Oh, I crossed my legs tightly and that must be impeding her work. My paws tremble terribly as I force them to uncurl from each other, allowing the much larger wolf the access she needs. As soon as I do, I can feel her breath blow over my shorts. The sudden warmth tingles fiercely and brings about the exact response I was trying to suppress.

I can feel myself getting hard.

The salmon almost escapes but I manage to force it back down.

My entire body is shaking now and I feel myself bump into the warm fur of the wolf hovering over me. Even with my head hidden under the pillow, my mind can picture just what I think is happening outside the safety of my tiny den.

A large pair of paws settle on the waist of my shorts and I feel two claws carefully tugging from either side. My legs try to cross again but I force them to stay open. Slowly and with great care, Tess slides my shorts down past my thighs and to my knees. I have to lift my rump as she goes to allow my fluffy white tail to escape the tailhole cut in the seam.

My body is warmer than I’ve ever felt it. It’s even warmer than the time I got that fever that was so bad, my mom actually took me to the hospital. It’s even warmer than when I stepped off the train and into Savanna Central. It’s even warmer than that time that Fru Fru...against my head...right in my ear…

Oh, geez.

The memory of that night almost six months ago hits me like a train and I feel myself getting even harder. I have to be at full length now. Can Tess see it in the darkness of the room? What does it look like to her? Am I an adequate size for the vixens…?

This is the one situation where I wish she could read my mind so she could answer my questions without me having to actually ask them out loud. Making those words leave my lips would be pretty much impossible, especially with how much I’m trembling already.

I just want to get this over with.

What is she doing? I can’t feel her-

OH.

A long, uneven gust of warm air blows across my bare groin, sending tingles up my spine and straight through my brain. My back arches against my will and my toes curl tightly to my paws. A bolt of pain from my bad paw tries to break through the strange new sensation but doesn’t manage to draw my attention.

I kind of want to look down to see what’s going on, but inside, I know I would regret it forever. Whatever Tess is doing to me right now, it’s something she has to do and it’s something I have to prove to her that I can do. It’s for the best. It’s for the best. It’s for the best.

It’s for theEAAGH-!

My mind explodes in on itself as a hot, wet object makes contact with my exposed nether region. I want to try to like it, but it’s so slimy and unnerving that I can’t help but lose my cool a little bit. To avoid freaking out and hurting Tess, I instead dig my claws into the bedsheets and squeeze with all my might.

The strange sensation hits me again and my mind flashes over in exactly the same way. I want to try to play out what is going on in my head, but whatever she is doing is shutting down my brain in the scariest way imaginable.

What is she-

SSSTTTTHHHHH!

I almost choke on the air that I suck in through my teeth. Whatever was touching me seconds earlier is now fully enveloping me in its humid heat. I’m harder than I’ve ever been before and my body responds against my will.

I push into it slightly, though I don’t know why. It feels really good, but the effect it’s having on my mind is telling me that I should be running away, not staying to enjoy it!

The sound of my heartbeat is deafeningly loud now. Under the pillow, the air is already superheated with the smell of my own breath trapped in with me. The smell of fish juice invades my senses and confuses me. I want to choke or scream out, but I’m locking up.

Tess is moving up and down on me now. I lose complete control of my body.

Is this sex? Does everyone lose all sense of who they are when they do this? My ears are flicking wildly against the pillow and my limbs are struggling weakly against the mattress. I don’t like this! I want control back! Why can’t I stop my hips from grinding?!

Tess is going faster now, but that familiar fire from my times spent alone is still missing. What am I not doing right? Tess has been going for a good while now and I still can’t feel that tingling of my muscles tightening all at once. What do I do by myself that I’m not doing now?

It’s so hard to think…

The struggling in my limbs becomes less of reciprocation and more of an actual escape attempt. I’m trying to push myself away from her but she seems to take it as me trying to push into her. Instead of Tess letting me escape from this overwhelming situation, she only increases the action. Faint barks and yips escape my throat and I’m powerless to stop them.

Quickly, figure out what I need to do to finish!

Okay, normally I’m going slow the whole way there so I can feel everything and take my time. Tess isn’t affording me that luxury and I don’t have enough control over my body to ask for it. I feel a bit of saliva leak down my chin, staining the sheets below.

What next? Then I get comfy and make sure I’m going to be alone for at least a little while so that no one barges in on me in the act.

I’m not comfy and I’m sure as hell not alone.

I’m seeing stars now. My mind swirls with colors even though I can’t see anything around me.

What was I thinking about again? Oh yeah, the missing ingredient that I need to finish this.

Then I think about something that makes me hard and I try to relive it.

That’s it.

I’m not thinking about anything ‘sexy.’

What do I usually think about?

For a while when I first started doing this, I thought of the one wolf girl in class who always seemed to have her pants on a bit too low. But that memory was foiled when she turned around and cussed me out one day for looking. The sheer embarrassment of that moment ruined my attraction to her forever. Though I didn’t really blame her for getting creeped out. Looking back, I should have just ignored it.

I feel the claws on my good paw tear into the sheets, sending fluffy cotton flying onto the bed with us.

The most recent thing I’ve been thinking of has been...oh, that night where Fru Fru…

She…

The memory floats across into my mind as if I’m living it again for the first time. I’m just sleeping in the daycare room like I normally do, but a slight squeak right near my ear stirs me from my slumber. I glance over at my usual sleeping partner but my mind goes blank when I spot her.

Fru Fru is laying in her usual spot against my head but her blankets are partially off of her. Not only that, but her pajama bottoms are slid down a bit and her paw is pushed under them. I don’t know what’s going on at first, but she lets out another muffled squeak of a moan right next to my ear. It’s enough evidence for me to figure out what she’s doing.

Is she awake? I want to say something, but if she’s just doing this in her sleep, I can’t imagine how mortified she would be if I woke her up to stop her.

Should I just let her finish?

My ears can’t even fold down to block the sound out; she’s laying right under my ear and moving them will only wake her up.

I squint my eyes shut tight and try to ignore the sounds she’s making. A strange smell enters my nose and draws my attention. It’s a smell I’ve never encountered before, but it’s very familiar. It smells very much of Fru Fru, but it’s much more potent. Is this…?

The scent of shrew apparently doesn’t care what species it chooses to affect. Only seconds after I identify it, I feel my body growing hot and my shorts growing tight.

Shit, shit, not now! Not with a whole room full of other kits sleeping! Plenty of them probably have good enough night vision to see this even in the darkness of the room!

My paws shoot to my shorts and force the offending body part back down against my leg. I can’t let anyone see this. I can’t let anyone hear Fru Fru! If she wakes someone else up with her squeaky voice and they catch wind of her unconscious actions, she’ll be laughed at mercilessly!

Forcing myself to ignore my body’s response to her accidental playtime, I lower my right ear just enough to graze the top of her head. Carefully, I flick her lightly a few times just enough to stir her awake. She squirms a bit and her moaning stops.

For a few tense seconds, I don’t sense anything.

Then she gasps sharply and I hear her pull her paw quickly out of her pajama bottoms.

“Oh my gawd!” she whispers to herself. Then I feel her gaze locked on me.

“Adam...are you awake?” she asks, the tone of her voice begging me to reject that notion.

I twitch my head a bit and let out the most convincing snore I can muster. Trying to remember what I’ve been told I do in my sleep, I throw in a quick licking of my chops to be safe.

She’s quiet for another few agonizingly slow moments before she lets out of a sigh of relief.

“Oh thank heavens…” she exhales. I hear what sounds like her paw rubbing on the pillow before she shuffles herself back under the blanket. She doesn’t get back to sleep for at least an hour. I don’t get back to sleep for the rest of the night.

The memory finishes and I finally notice that the assault on my groin has concluded. The heat from Tess’s body and breath isn’t present on my lower half anymore. I’m still hard but I notice that the blankets have been tossed over my lower half to cover it from sight. What happened? Did she stop? Did I do something wrong? My heart is slowing down as the seconds pass and I suddenly notice that I’m winded.

My muscles are still contracting. Did...did I finish?

I slowly pull the pillow away from my face and notice that it’s soaked with a combination of saliva and tears. When did I start crying? Well, to be fair, my body was out of control for a good amount of time and I have no idea what I was doing.

The light in the room is back on now.

How long was I reliving that memory?

I push the pillow away from me and immediately reach down to slide my shorts back up. It’s a bit of a struggle, trying to slide my tail through the hole in my shorts while the front side of me keeps getting snagged.

My groin is still wet.

I look up shyly and see that Tess is sitting on the opposite edge of the bed, facing away from me. Her shoulders are slumped down and her head is hanging low. It occurs to me quite suddenly that she’s shaking and I can hear muffled sobs escaping her.

I pull myself closer to her, fearing for her. Did I accidentally hurt her when I lost control? Did I scratch her with one of my struggling claws? The last thing I want to do is hurt her any more than I already have.

“Tess, are-”

“Y-yeah, bud. You’re good to go, no problems there,” she chokes out. I can hear the misery in her voice. My body moves itself closer to her so that I can place my paw up on her back. She doesn’t respond and her body doesn’t even twitch at the contact like I thought it might. But she doesn’t pull away from me.

“No, are YOU okay?” I demand, trying to turn her around to face me. She resists and refuses to move. There’s not much I can do to force her since she’s so much bigger and stronger than me. I can feel myself starting to get worked up over this. If I hurt her and she’s bleeding or something, I need to know so that I can apologize.

I slide down the side of the bed and limp around so that I’m right in front of her. To my relief, I see no traces of blood on her face. Just some wet spots that I think might be tears. But the look on her face honestly terrifies me. Even though I’m standing right in front of her eyes, she’s looking straight through me. I don’t even know if she knows I’m here. Her eyes are leaking a constant flow of tears and she shakes like she’s trying to cry, but her eyes are locked open.

“Tess…?” I ask her weakly. The sound of my voice breaks through to her somewhat and she blinks. Her eyes finally focus and notice me standing right there. When she sees that it’s me she’s looking at, she quickly hides her face in her folded arms.

“Did I hurt you…?” I plead. She sniffs suddenly and jerks her head up, letting out another choked sob as she looks into my eyes. A guilty, forlorn expression is written on her face and I don’t know what to say to her.

“NO! No, no, no, buddy, I’m fine! You didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just…” she tries to finish but the words won’t come out. I place my forehead on hers and share my heat. I can feel her trembling against me and her mental state starts to concern me. She hesitates at first, but gives in and leans back into my show of affection.

“I just...heard you crying. When you came, you were crying like a kit and...oh god, Winter, what am I? I’m a fucking monster…” Tess leans more into me, but it seems like it’s just a factor from her body giving out under its own weight. I notice that her breath isn’t as minty as it usually is and carries with it a familiar smell that I can’t put a name to.

“You’re not a monster!” I assure her. “You’re just like me. You’re trapped in here.”

“Yeah, trapped in here sucking off kits,” she spits at the carpet. Her clothes are still on, I finally notice. Did she ever actually take them off? I don’t know what ‘sucking off’ means but it probably refers to the sex.

“You’re doing what you can to save lives. Just like my father,” I say confidently. If she hadn’t done this with me, I might have actually had my freak out during my first time with one of the vixens and I might have hurt them. This way, the ice is broken and I kinda know what to expect when it comes time to do my job. It’s going to be a matter of turning the lights out, doing the thing and thinking of something sexy so I can finish as quickly as possible.

Yeah, that doesn’t sound too hard, right?

I think I can manage.

Even after my loss of control, I feel fine. It’s honestly Tess that seems to have been the most affected by this session. I know I should be shaking and crying over losing my innocence...but I think I truly lost that the moment I felt my father’s dead body laying on me. Having Tess doing everything she can to make me feel comfortable is pretty small change in comparison to the other traumas I’ve experienced. I still freak out when strangers rush at me too quickly. But I doubt I’ll be having any panic attacks from this.

Despite the brief episode I had under the pillow, it honestly felt...kinda good.

Not good enough to want to try again anytime soon, but it wasn’t painful at all.

Just really overwhelming.

Tess tilts her head sideways so that she can look at me. Her nose is running pretty good, but how did it get onto her eyebrow?

“How did you get boogers up there?” I blurt out, not caring how jarring a tonal shift it is. Tess’s eyes cross as she tries to see what I’m looking at. She uncurls her arms and lifts a paw to her face, pulling it back down with a sticky white substance covering her claws. Her eyes widen and she stands up, forcing me back a few steps.

“Geez, bud! You got me good, didn’t you?” she asks my general direction as she stomps into the bathroom and closes the door. I don’t really know what she meant but her voice sounded much brighter than it had been. As I had hoped, seeing me soldier through the ordeal and trying to comfort her must have proven to her that I am actually alright.

But am I?

Probably.

For now.

Maybe.

A few minutes later, she exits the bathroom with her face washed of any and all boogers. Her mood still isn’t happy, but it’s not sad anymore either. She looks down at the spot on the bed where I had chosen to sit down to wait for her and gives me a small smile.

I bounce a bit as she sits next to me and I end up leaning against her. She wraps a large arm around me and pulls me closer to her. Her familiar minty smell seems to be back and it calms my heart the rest of the way. I hated seeing her mood so low and my body wouldn’t rest until I could see that she would be okay. Now that she is, I can finally relax the rest of the way.

“We won’t have to do that again, right?” I ask her. She reaches over with her other paw and ruffles my ears soothingly. A gentle sigh escapes her lips.

“No, buddy. Not for a few weeks. But when your season starts, they’ll probably be sending vixens to you one at a time. Probably once a day. And all you’ll need to do is finish like you did a little while ago, as quick as you can and you will have the rest of each day off. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”

I ponder her words and something occurs to me.

“...When the season is over and the vixens are all...you know...then what will happen with me?” I almost dread the number of possible answers she can give me. Her mood starts to sink once more, but she chooses to respond anyway.

“That’s something we can worry about later, believe me. That won’t be for a few months. But it does have to do with what I already spoke to you about. If you can come up with some things to sell to Boss, that answer will be much easier. So keep thinking, okay?”

“Okay.”

We just sit there, one of us trying to come down from a high and the other trying to pull themselves up from a personal low.

Both victims.

Both captives.

Both mammals who deserve much better.

But since we’re here, we have to do what we can.

Even if it scars us for life.


	12. Days Go By

I start to settle into a routine.

Every morning, I wake up and take a shower. I have to dry off with the same towels, since there are only two and I wouldn’t know where to look to find more.

After my shower, I go to the fridge and grab a tin of fish to eat. It’s not all salmon, but thankfully salmon is the most numerous. There are dozens of cans lining the shelves of the fridge, enough to keep me fed for a while. The problem is that I don’t know when or if more food will come. If Ash had some sort of arrangement or rationing plan, I’m unaware of it. So I can’t just eat as much as I want without knowing that more will come eventually.

For all I know, this food might be all I’ll have to eat for months.

And I like fish a lot, but it’s only been a couple weeks and I’m already starting to get sick of the same tins over and over. I tried mixing it up with some tuna and sardines, but they’re all stewing in the same juices. The same flavor, day after day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

All I have to drink is water. The bottles will run out soon so I’ve been saving them. The kitchen has a sink and the sink has running water, so I fill the used bottles up to store for later. What I wouldn’t give for a can of soda right now…

Even just some juice would at least restore some sanity.

Tess hasn’t visited since the day she cleared me for duty. I don’t want to assume it’s because she doesn’t want to see me, but that’s what it’s starting to feel like. I know I’m just one fox in a place where she’s in charge of a bunch of different rooms of mammals. But the last time I was with her, she had to do things to me that hurt her so badly. I don’t blame her at all for not wanting to be around the one she had to violate against her will. All that I know is that she said my ‘season’ would be starting in two weeks, and it’s been two weeks.

I’d love to see Doc again, but she doesn’t have free roam like Tess does. I would need to be hurt or sick to get her to come over. I thought that she would have to come take my stitches out, but as I learned about a week ago, the stitches dissolve on their own. All that’s left behind is a roadmap of claw marks; raised ridges of healing flesh and white fur that’s still only a fraction of the length of the rest of my coat. At least my dark skin is almost entirely covered now. I’m starting to look white all over again.

I wonder daily about what the vixens are doing. I’m sure Laura is doing her best to keep them under control. From the very little I know about vixens just entering their mating seasons, they tend to get out of control very easily. That explains the meltdown they had when they heard my age. I still only really know Laura and Ven out of the whole bunch, leaving 20 of the vixens a mystery to me. Tess said I was going to be bred one on one with them. Does that mean we’ll be introducing ourselves right before having sex? That sounds awkward as hell.

I’m nervous about breeding.

I do not know exactly when it’s going to start beyond knowing that it will be sometime very soon. I’m a bit less worried about the actual sex than I was before that day with Tess, so I’ll have to try to thank her for that. It’s the post-sex that I’m most worried about now.

What if I can’t get any of them pregnant? What if I’m too young or just can’t have kits?

Will they take it out on me or the vixens?

I don’t want any of them getting hurt over me. They were with Ash before, so they have to have had kits with him.

Wait.

So…

All of them have been mothers? How young are the kits when they’re taken away? It hits me again just how fucked up this place is. All I can think about is all of those cheerful sounding, bright-eyed foxes from the vixen room and what they must have looked like upon losing their babies forever.

Was Ven a mother? Laura?

Was Tess?

The more I think about it, the more it hurts. All the captives I’ve met here so far have been absolutely amazing mammals. If they weren’t locked deep in this pit of hell, they would all have normal, happy lives. I could imagine Tess as manager for a large department store. The way she rushes around trying to keep everything organized speaks highly of her multitasking skills. I don’t know much about Laura besides for her being able to keep a room of other individuals under order. Maybe she would have been a teacher? I did notice a crack in her mask the last time I saw her. Under that stern exterior is definitely something else.

Doc must have been a doctor of some kind. I’m certain that Doc is not her real name and is just what everyone called her when she got brought in. Mina is harder to pin down, as most of what she does seems to be learned from Doc. She functions more as an assistant. She could have just been a student for all I know. But she is very kind and affectionate, so maybe a therapist of some kind?

I can’t picture the farmers as anything other than what they are.

They’re monsters. There should be no life for them outside these walls.

It occurs to me that I’ve been sitting with a fork sticking out of my mouth, pondering silently for a good hour or so. Without anyone to bother me, I’ve found myself daydreaming a lot. Usually I get interrupted when I do that. In the isolation of my new home, however, nobody bothers coming to check on me.

It doesn’t help that being in this room for weeks on end is absolutely, mind-numbingly boring.

There’s nothing to do. I don’t know how Ash managed it.

I’ve already looked through the room multiple times, trying to find some sort of hidden entertainment. All I found were his clothes, which are much too big on me. I put on one of his black shirts anyway to cover my chest, having to ignore the feeling of the fabric touching my knees. At least I’ll be able to use it as an emergency den if the time ever comes.

I pick up the empty can of fish and throw it into the half-full garbage can. Tess will need to come back sometime soon anyway, I’ll have to ask her what she wants me to do with the trash bags when they fill up.

Pounding footsteps pass by my door at that moment.

It’s someone heavy.

In the first few days after Tess ‘trained’ me, I developed a fear of the hallway noises. I know that Lex and Bruce are probably somewhere in the farm. The two goats and the leopard from when I was kitnapped haven’t shown their faces since that day. I wonder if they might have already worked off their debts. Or they could just have a job somewhere else. It’s just speculation for me.

I still wouldn’t want to hear them outside my door.

The steps fade away down the hall and I let out a breath I had been holding. I should probably be more used to hearing animals approaching, but I still panic every time. What if an animal walks in that doesn’t like the fact that I’m alive? I’ve had nightmares already about Bruce barging in and killing me. I don’t want to know what Lex would do to me, since my father was the one that rendered him half-blind.

My heart rate slowly drops back down to normal.

I take a sip of water to clear the sudden dryness in my throat.

What should I do now?

I’d take a nap, but I only woke up a little while ago. And I had one of my skin-sharing dreams again, where I have to watch myself remove my pelt and let someone else wear it. Going back into that realm and possibly back into that nightmare aren’t high on my list of things to do.

I already showered and ate, so can’t do those again.

Looks like I’m just going to explore the room again and hope I find something that I missed the last dozen times I’ve done it. At least it gives me a chance to get up and move around a bit. I’ve been feeling sluggish with how much I’ve just been laying in bed lately.

There’s literally nothing else to do.

No sights.

No sounds, besides the ones that traumatize me.

I could really go for some music.

But all I get are hallway noises. I’ve been hearing louder and louder sexual noises lately. It’s like the rooms that they’re coming from are getting closer and closer to my own. Just yesterday, I heard a lot of squeaky yipping coming from the other side of my wall, behind the fridge.

It’s nice to know I have some neighbors, but the only tidbits I know about him/them is that they don’t care who else can hear their exploits. Though I guess this isn’t really the kind of place a mammal has to care about what is heard. You’re trapped either way. Might as well be as loud as the hell you want.

I get down from the table with a slight wobble, making sure to take my time gaining my balance. Over the last two weeks, my paw has gotten much better. I’m still wearing the brace, but I’m able to walk around almost like normal with it on. I only fell a dozen or so times while fumbling around in the dark each morning, so I’d call that a win.

My chest tingles slightly, but the pain is barely there anymore. The wounds are about three weeks old. Or are they four? I can’t even keep track anymore. It’s obvious that the scars will be there forever, and I might possibly never grow fur on those spots ever again. Strangely, I don’t really mind that thought. If I can’t manage to get out of here soon, I’d rather not have my skin heal to the point of being useful to them again. Then all this pain, all this loss, would have been for nothing at all. I don’t intend on losing my skin just for some sick freak to wear for a season then buy a new one the year later.

The first thing I do is make my bed. It’s actually a really big bed compared to me, since I’m such a little guy. It provides some sort of challenge to keep my mind busy for at least a little while. I don’t replace the blanket though, I’ve been keeping that on the ground just in case I need to make a really quick den to hide in. In an emergency, I could also just wrap myself in the blanket to protect myself.

Once the bed is made, I walk over to the dresser and sit in front of it. There isn’t really much in the room. There’s just a bed, a dresser, and a coat rack in the actual sleeping area. I had managed to tip the coat rack back into a standing position the day after I last saw Tess. The dresser, however, is a bit more involved. I can’t actually reach the top drawer, and I’ve been too nervous about messing my paw up again to risk climbing something to get to it.

But today might be the day.

On the bottom shelves, I take another peek at my clothing options, in case some clothes my size might have magically appeared overnight. But no such luck; I’m stuck with what I’ve been wearing for weeks. My clothes smell and that’s even after washing them in the tub a few times with just plain water.

They need soap and whatever chemicals are used in actual washers.

I might actually have to modify some of Ash’s clothes to fit me better. Huh, that sounds like it could be a good day project. If only I had some tools to work with.

I look over at the kitchen table and eye one of the chairs.

It’s a bad idea, I know.

But I know that the longer I wait, the more insane I’ll become. I need to find out what’s up there.

With a slight wobble in my step thanks to the brace, I pull the large wooden chair over to the dresser and slide it up against the bottom drawers. I’ve already gotten used to the method of climbing up onto the seat so it’s just a matter of standing up on it. Thankfully, the chair is sturdy and easily holds my weight in an upright position. I bet it could hold a polar bear.

The drawer, out of reach to me since I was tossed in here, is finally within grabbing distance. What treasures await me? Could there be a television? Or a phone of some kind? Hell, I’d even settle for a deck of cards. Just something to keep me occupied while I wait for stuff to happen.

With bated breath, I slide the drawer out.

The breath leaves my lungs immediately. But this isn’t from shock or surprise. I feel more like a deflating balloon. The drawer is completely empty besides for a scrappy looking notebook pushed all the way to the back of the drawer, where I can barely see it.

A disappointed sigh leaves my lips as I reach my arm in and pull the drawer’s sole treasure out. Maybe I can find something to write with and this can be my new doodle book. I haven’t been able to draw anything for weeks now and it’s starting to bother me. My school bag at home holds all of my art supplies and my folders of finished work.

If I could have brought one thing with me into this prison, it would have been my drawing pad.

But this notebook might be a somewhat acceptable substitute.

I flick the book open, expecting to see a ton of empty pages. My eyes widen as I see that the notebook is not only written in, but almost completely filled. I fumble it over and glance at the cover again. Somehow I had completely missed that the name ‘Ash’ is written in neat cursive on the outside of the notebook.

Holy shit, this must be Ash’s journal.

Up until now, all I knew about Ash was assumptions based on the reactions from his death. He seemed like a nice enough fox, and apparently made friends with everyone around here. At least enough for everyone to know his name.

I don’t know what he had going on with Bruce and I’d rather not think about it.

But he was apparently a successful breeder and had been stuck here a good while before his sudden replacement. How many kits of his were killed?

...How many might still be alive?

Ash, if you’re out there, I promise. I'll try my hardest to save any of your kits that might still be stuck here. It’s the least I can do for taking your place and getting you killed. If I succeed, I’ll tell them that you were a good tod and would have loved to have known them.

The thoughts of Ash’s kits bring me back to thoughts of my own future kits.

I know it’s unnatural for me to even be having them at this age, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to absolutely destroy me when they’re taken away. If I’m going to be forced to be a father, I want to be able to love them like one. It’s not going to happen, I know. But the longing to connect and protect is already awake in me.

I break myself from my thoughts and hop down from the chair to look at my most recent find. It saddens me to see that the inside cover has numerous well-drawn pictures of different animals in it. Ash was a much better artist than I am. Maybe I can try out some of his linework.

Beyond the first few pages of doodles is a weird list of different names. It’s like an index that was added to day after day, once each new section of pages was finished. All of the names are unfamiliar to me, so I skip to a random page and see what secrets he held.

This must be Ash’s writing.

‘Nora - Fennec Fox’

‘Age - Around 30~’

‘Sessions - 5’

That last part had been erased and rewritten over multiple times before.

‘Notes - Have to be gentle, she is small and needs to go slow. Seems to like a decent amount of romantic talking before activity. Does not like talking about daily life. DO NOT ASK HOW DAY WENT. Might have a husband or boyfriend, do not ask. Likes talking about music and movies. Favorite way to start is teasing and stripping while trying to maintain conversation about something else. Likes being lifted and picked up, but also likes being top. Let her decide where she wants to be but help her get there. Ears are her favorite place to be rubbed. STAY ON OUTSIDE OF EARS. Her claws are sharp. Whispers into ears good. Moan into ear best. Loves heavy after cuddling and petting. Snores but cute. Climbed onto chest while asleep, likes keeping contact. Prefers the heat. Heavy sleeper. Breakfast in bed appreciated. GET FOOD OTHER THAN FISH FOR CLIENTS. Also - likes talking face to face but not while being picked up. Sit or lay down often to stay at her level.’

UH, WOW. Okay, this must be…

‘Likes - Oral, Slow Vaginal, Tongue in-’

YEP.

THIS IS A BLACK BOOK.

Is this entire notebook filled with different animals that Ash has been with?!

Flipping through the pages only confirms my suspicions. Name after name, page after page, list after list. There must be a hundred different bios in here, all describing the ways that numerous animals like to be screwed. And it’s not just the sex that he writes about. It’s also the little personal details that someone might want to remember for the future, like their individual triggers and quirks.

Nora likes feeling powerful but also wants affection.

Abigail likes rough treatment and being slammed against the wall.

I don’t know what 69 means, but some guy named Tracey seems to like it a whole damn lot.

I slam the notebook shut and hide it under my pillow, not ready to deal with how awkward it is reading about a dead fox’s sexual conquests. Why was he with so many different animals? Wouldn’t he just be paired with the vixens as a breeder? A fennec would gain nothing from sex with an arctic, right? Is there something I’m not being told?

The sooner Tess comes, the better. But her showing up at my door would also mean I would be taking on my first vixen as a breeder.

I don’t know what I want!

My face finds its way into my paws and I let out a loud, frustrated groan into my pads. There’s so many things I need to know, and the only thing that is offering any answers is also loaded with fascinating details about Ms Violet’s darkest fantasies and what hip motions they require.

Why can’t anything in this place just make sense for once?!

I don’t notice the sounds of someone outside my door until it opens. My heart skips another beat and I glance up into the doorway. A familiar but less well-known face greets me and stares back at me in confusion.

It’s Connor.

The same leopard that pulled me off of Bruce in the alleyway is standing in my doorway, looking at me like he’s seen a ghost. He’s dressed in loose street clothes and a beanie that has him looking like he stepped right off the set of an episode of Barking Bad. Contrary to Lex and Bruce, though, I don’t harbor as much ill-will towards this snatcher. While he might have played a part in taking me and my father, this is the one member of the group that didn’t look like he wanted to be there. I can’t remember him saying anything at all, actually. Is he mute?

But the wolverine that passes by him definitely brightens my day. Connor steps awkwardly to the side to let Doc pass him and backs out of the doorway. He gives me another pensive glance before shutting the door behind him.

Still don’t know what he sounds like though. Oh well, thoughts for later, I have a friend to see.

“DOC!” I burst out into happy yipping and run up to her. She stumbles back a bit, her weight offset by an unusually large medical bag in her grip. Apparently my regained mobility is something of a surprise to her. She had never seen how fast I can be when I’m not injured, after all.

“Oof! Oh, hey kiddo! See you got your legs back!” she laughs a bit and hugs me tightly. I squeeze her with all my might but I can tell that I’m barely affecting her at all. She’s definitely a beast of a mammal when it comes to strength. Her attire and scent are just the same as I remember and I take a few moments to bask in the safety of her presence.

I hadn’t expected to see her for a long time. Or at least until I got hurt again.

How did she get an excuse to visit me?

But the frantic motions coming from her medical bag draw my attention away from her. I take a step back as Doc sets the bag down next to her and squats down to fumble with the zipper. What the hell is going on? What’s in there?

As soon as the bag opens, my vision is filled with white.

The sounds of ecstatic chattering and squeaking enter both my ears and consume my mind with raging emotions of guilt, sorrow, joy and shock. The last time I heard this voice, it was wailing after me as I was carried away to my supposed doom.

Her face stops in front of my own and blue eyes meet red.

“MINA!” I shriek, already feeling hot tears starting to flow down my face. The excitable mink chitters even louder and darts all around my body, making sure that I’m actually here. She isn’t even saying anything as she explores me, her voice giving out under the weight of her emotions and letting her feral side take over. She’s too happy to function normally.

In this place, you don’t get to experience this kind of feeling very often.

I treasure every second of it as I fall back onto my bed and let her shower me in her affection. Doc is watching us, chuckling warmly as the scene plays out. I bet she is crying a few tears of her own but every time I try to look, she’s facing a different direction.

Okay, hide it then, tough gal. We know your secrets.

“Chichichichichichichi!” Mina’s voice fills my mind again as she chitters right in my ear, making them both flop around happily. I try to grab her smaller body to give her a hug of my own, but she doesn’t let me. She leaves little bites as she runs and I start to get the feeling that she’s lost control of herself.

Doc sees that she’s taking it too far and steps in, her larger paw finding the mink easily and pressing her down against me. Mina hisses for a moment, but quickly calms down as I wrap my arms around her and give her a cuddle. She’s just as warm and squirmy as I remember.

Her eyes focus on me again and she relaxes completely, letting out a tired sigh into my face. I’m content to just look at her, happy that I’m able to see her again after these last couple weeks. I was so sure she wouldn’t be able to see me again, which was especially painful because of the way I left her. The happy sound she is making does wonders to drown out the lingering memory of her screaming. I hated myself for causing her that kind of pain. Doc warned us both about getting attached but none of us listened.

I accepted the affection so greedily.

But it doesn’t matter anymore, she’s here! And I’m alive! And all three of us in the room together are HAPPY! The impossible has become possible!

“WinterWinterWinterWinterWinter~” Mina sings down at me from her cozy spot on my chest. I rub her ears like she had rubbed mine when I had first awakened from my injury. She chitters some more, but these sounds are much more relaxed than before. Within minutes, she’s fallen asleep on my chest. I can’t help the broad smile that spreads across my face as I watch her snooze restfully.

“Finally, she can get some sleep,” Doc sighs. I look up at her with a questioning look. “She hasn’t slept since you left, kid. First it was because she thought you were dead and then it was because she was too excited to see you. I needed to wait for a good enough reason to make the trip, though. And since I needed to give you a pre-season physical anyway…”

I nod my head up at her, trying not to disturb the sleeping mink.

“Physical?” I ask, tilting my head to the side.

“Well, yeah. Have to make sure you’re in shape and all. For...mating.”

“But didn’t Tess already-”

“SHE. Just made sure you could actually finish. We still don’t know if you’re fertile or not. Plus, we have to make sure you don’t have anything that might spread to the other vixens. You’re young, and shouldn’t have anything, but you WERE with that wolf. She’s probably crawling with all kinds of diseases by now,” Doc huffs, her mood falling again as she mentions Tess. Something about the way she’s talking about Tess irks me.

“What do you have against Tess? She’s nice,” I argue. Doc shoots me an exasperated glare and folds her muscular arms to her chest.

“Nice? Kid, she’s the grease in the gears around here. She practically WORKS for them. Plus she’s slept with pretty much every mammal in here, including most of the females!”

My ears flatten in response to her increasingly hostile tone.

“She didn’t want to do what we did together. She doesn’t want any of this, Doc!”

“Oh, sure. Her fucking you must have hurt her SO badly, forgive me.”

I curl a bit tighter around Mina, trying to block out some of the sound. Doc’s voice is already starting to wake her up and I didn’t intend on letting her miss out on some much-needed shut-eye.

“It did hurt her,” I state firmly, my eyes narrowing. Doc stares right back at me, unwilling to back down from her position.

“HER? Winter, for fuck’s sake, you’re just a kit! She fucked you! She’s a rapist! What she does around here is disgusting! Why does she get to roam free while we get kept under lock and key? Is making sure a kit knows how to drop his shorts THAT important?!”

“Oh shit, you’re jealous of her,” I blurt out. Doc’s eyes shoot open and her large paw stomps the carpet.

“WHAT?!” she yells. I pull my oversized shirt over Mina to muffle the sound a bit more, trying everything I can to keep Doc from waking her up.

“No, not jealous of her job, jealous that she gets to walk around like that,” I elaborate further. Some of the steam leaks out of Doc’s posture and she slumps down a bit with a confused look on her face.

“Well, why DOES she? Out of everyone locked in here, they give the whore the keys to the place? She hasn’t done jack shit to help us get out of here, either!”

A growl escapes my throat. I get that Doc feels that the system down here is unfair, but so what? We’re in the lowest pit of hell, what does she expect? Why does she have to take it out on my friend?

“Doc, STOP. Tess isn’t like that. I’ve seen what her job does to her. Do you know the first thing I saw when we finished training?” Doc gives me a strange look and shakes her head slowly.

“She was crying like she just watched someone die. She looked like I must have looked when I realized my dad was dead. Doc, this place is KILLING HER!” I shout finally, my anger reaching the tipping point and spilling over. Mina flinches awake and peeks at me with one sleepy eye, trying to figure out what is going on.

Doc takes a step back, surprised at my outburst.

“K-kid, I wasn’t-”

“Yes, you were! Tess is my friend, too! Don’t talk about her like she’s responsible for what goes on around here! She’s just as much a victim as any of us! Should I call the vixens rapists because we’re going to have to have sex? Should I think of my dad as a monster because he tore my chest up? Should I say that YOU are a drug enabler because you got me hooked on peace?!”

Mina’s eyes are wide open now, watching me with intent. Doc’s jaw hangs open loosely and she very obviously doesn’t know how to respond. They’ve probably never seen me truly pissed off before. They hadn’t seen what happens when I start seeing red.

“You...got hooked…?” are all the words that Doc can manage to stutter. I reach under my pillow and pull out the box that had once been hidden on top of the fridge. Very shortly after Tess’s last visit, I had used the chair to climb my way onto the fridge so I could get some of the liquid relief I so desperately needed.

Doc picks up the small box and flips it open, her eyes falling on the empty vials and used needle. I didn’t know how to use it at first, so my neck still has a few stinging welts from missed punctures. Not to mention I had no way of sterilizing it so I had to settle with running it under the hottest faucet water I could get.

Mina flinches as she starts to pick up on what I’ve been saying.

“You...got addicted. I...I did this…” Doc whispers to herself as she backs up against the wall and slumps down. Her eyes lose their focus as they start to tear up. I lose some of my anger as I watch one of my first friends in this place reduced to tears because of me.

Goddammit, I hurt them again. And this time, it’s my fault. I could have just defended Tess and left it at that, but I had to turn it around and blame Doc for my lack of impulse control. She only gave me two doses. She wasn’t even around for every subsequent shot I gave myself. Tess only gave me one and it was to stop a seizure of some kind.

The rest of the stash’s use was my own doing. I made the choice every time to feed my body more of the chemical it craved so hungrily.

“I didn’t mean...Doc, please don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself. I doubt I would have made it until now without this stuff, so you might have saved my life by giving it to me. Seriously, it’s just another one of the things we have to put up with in order to survive here. Like what Tess does, like what I’ll have to do, like Ash did. We make mistakes, Doc, but if it wasn’t for the mammals who own this place, we wouldn’t be making these choices to begin with.”

Doc nods just enough for me to register movement.

“For survival…” she mumbles. Down on my chest, I feel Mina’s paws starting to trace through my newly grown fur, tracking the scars like they’re dots. It tickles a bit, but I try my best to keep a straight face. Maybe she’s just seeing if all the wounds are fully closed now.

“Until we can find a way out,” I agree. Doc stands up and shambles over to her back, placing the empty drug kit into it. Oh, I hope she brings me more. It’s been a couple days since I ran out and I’m already starting to get itchy. Mina’s tickling isn’t helping to mute the sensation.

“Oh, and I also found Ash’s notebook,” I tell them. Mina’s ears perk up and Doc finally snaps back to reality at my words. They give each other a look and some kind of mutual thought passes between them. I’m left out of the nonverbal conversation.

“He has a notebook?” Doc asks urgently. I nod my head, a bit apprehensive as the tone of her voice. “Where?”

I point to my pillow and she walks over to it before I can say anything else. The pillow is tossed aside, revealing the notebook to the rest of the world. The wolverine’s large claws pinch the notebook so that she can grip it and she starts flipping through it like she’s considering purchasing it or something.

She’s mumbling a strange line to herself over and over, but even with my excellent sense of hearing, her words are lost on me. Mina looks equally as confused as I am. The pages continue to flip past her wandering eyes until she sees something that halts her search.

“Ffff...you didn’t read this, yet, right kid?” she asks quickly.

“I mean...a little,” I admit, feeling my face heat up. Doc lets out a frustrated groan before tearing one of the pages out and crumbling it up. The sudden sound of ripping paper startles Mina a bit but a few quick pets calm her back down.

“You really shouldn’t. It’s not something for...well, nothing in this place is good for kits. But you really don’t need to be reading this,” she explains, so she can tell her logic is flawed even as she says it.

“Why?”

“It’s just stuff about Ash’s off season assignments. None of it applies to you, kid.”

“H-hold up. Off season what?” I stutter, trying to connect some missing pieces in my head.

“...Did Tess not tell you about what they have some of the breeders doing between seasons? Ugh, typical. But Ash was basically ‘for sale’ when he wasn’t making kits. He had a good amount of customers, too. It’s all very underground-stuff, very hush hush. Only mammals who are trusted by the Stripes can buy time. But the number of trusted animals is still high enough to make the off seasons very busy around here,” Doc explains while pulling out some equipment from her bag, presumably to do the task she came here to do.

“If I don’t come up with something to do, then they might have me…”

“I don’t know, kid. They might be willing to sell a minor, or they might not. I bet they’ll lose some customers because of what they did to Ash. But a few might still be interested...hell, I bet even MORE will be interested if they see a kit available. Sick fucks…”

Mina’s paws rub my chest with a bit more urgency and I feel my body starting to tremble. The past couple weeks, I managed to come to terms with the fact that I’m going to have to sleep with almost two dozen vixens within a matter of weeks. But I thought that would be the extent of abuse that my body would have to go through. The idea that I might have to have sex with tons of other outside my species is more than I can stomach. I think Ash had a few male customers too. I don’t...I can’t...oh f-

“BLUGH!” I shoot up off the bed as the bile reaches my mouth, forcing Mina to jump off of me in a mad scramble for safety. My breakfast, partially mixed with acid and muchus, lands on the carpet with a wet splattering sound. Doc jumps back a few steps to avoid getting splashed. A foul taste fills my mouth as I puke for the first time in weeks. I had managed to keep it down when Tess had done my training, but the image of a much larger, older male pinning me to the bed and pushing himself into me sent me careening over the edge of self-control.

As I spit the last bit of bile out of my mouth and fall to my knees on the ground, I feel Mina scurrying up to my side and patting my back supportively. Doc lumbers over as well, but doesn’t seem to know what to do to make me feel better.

Honestly, I probably needed that.

I’ve been feeling nauseous from weeks of eating nothing but fish.

“Feel a bit better?” Mina asks me softly, her smaller paw still rubbing tiny circles into my back. I groan a little from the foul taste but nod anyway. Doc decides to make herself useful and travels to the kitchen, where she opens one of the cabinets and comes back with a few sheets of paper towels. Oh heck, where did she get those? I’ve been looking for them!

While Mina keeps me company and makes sure that I’m not going to puke again, Doc cleans up my mess without the slightest sign of gagging. Normally, I can’t stand the sight or smell of someone else’s sick. But being a doctor must have given her a gut of steel.

“Well, since you’re down here, might as well do what I need to,” Doc mumbles as she pulls her bag over to where we’re sitting on the carpet.

The following thirty minutes or so are filled with various tasks of tedium that I vaguely recall from when my parents brought me to the doctor for my periodic checkups. She just performs simple tests, really, like making sure I don’t have a fever and other stuff like that. My paw is also finally released from the brace, now that I can walk on it normally. It feels great to have my paw exposed to the open air again. I was getting sick of having to cover it in a plastic bag when I took my showers.

The final few tests are a bit more invasive, however. She takes a few blood samples from my neck, asks for a urine sample and takes swab samples of other areas.

She makes Mina hide under the covers of my bed while she gives my lower body its examination. I’m not happy about Doc seeing my completely naked body, but the context of her being an actual medical professional makes it much easier to handle than what went down with Tess. Doc looks at my body in a scientific way, whereas Tess was forced to look at it in a traumatic sexual way.

When she’s satisfied, the wolverine packs away her tools and samples into her bag and gets ready to go.

Looks like it’s goodbye for another while, at least.

Mina gives me a pleading expression but I can’t say yes to her, despite her shimmering eyes. If she’s caught in here, who knows what would happen.

“Stay safe, Winter,” Mina mumbles as she wraps her tiny arms around me and hugs me as tightly as she can. She’s actually pretty strong for her size; strong enough to squeeze the air out of my lungs. Come to think of it, I think I remember reading something about how minks used to be some of the most effective predators relative to their size.

“Seeya, Mina. I will, I promise,” I assure her. I think she’s turning to leave, but instead she shoots up and plants her short muzzle on my cheek again. A warmth spreads through me, but this time it’s not from shyness, embarrassment or arousal. It’s a feeling of pure, caring love that is surprisingly pretty strong down here amongst the captives. Mostly everyone looks out for each other, from what I can tell. It’s actually a bit heartwarming, the fact that we refused to devolve into savages even though we’re at the mercy of monsters.

Hearts don’t change, it seems. We might be going through hell, but we’re going through it together.

“Winter...please...I can’t stand the thought of you getting hurt again…” the mink pleads with a few errant tears sliding down her face and staining her white fur. The red of her eyes is almost glowing now, the lights from the room reflecting off of them like they’re rubies.

Oh, Mina, you little sweetie.

“I’ll be okay. I got this, Mina, I swear. I can prove it if you want, but-”

A tiny paw slaps me in the face, cutting my assurances short.

“No!” she scolds, looking up at me with a glare and a pointed claw. I rub the sore spot on my face and blush shamefully.

“Sorry…” I mumble. Mina can’t stay mad for more than two seconds before she’s crawling against my chest to give me another goodbye hug.

“Keep marching on, little soldier. We’ll get there eventually,” I hear Doc speak up from the door. Her paw is in her one pocket but the other one is still clutching the bag, which Mina still has to get into.

I’m sure the method of travel is traumatizing for her, especially because of the way she was captured in the first place. I feel my heart melt a little more at the realization that she faced down her emotional scars just to get the chance to see me again.

My heart.

I give Doc a confident nod as I finish saying my goodbyes to Mina. The mink nervously climbs her way back into the medical bag and Doc seals her away. The bag is already shaking a bit as Mina frets. Out of any of us here, I think Mina deserves this hell the least. I know she’s older than me, but she’s so sweet and innocent that she could definitely pass for a child.

I hear a knock from the door and it opens calmly. Connor peeks in at us as he opens the door the rest of the way. Had he been just standing out there the whole time? Lex did something similar, but he gave off more of an impression of cowardice. I think Connor might have actually just been letting us finish.

Oh shit, did he hear Mina? He doesn’t seem to mind the movements inside the bag. Then again, he doesn’t seem to be working here by his own will. Maybe he’s just ignoring it so that he doesn’t cause us any trouble.

I’ll have to talk to him alone at some point to get a better reading on him. Maybe, if he’s just another animal caught in the trap, he could possibly help us get out of here.

I swear to myself that I’ll only cut him open a little bit for helping kitnap me.

As Doc is led away, I hear more steps approaching. What now?

A familiar white muzzle and pair of emerald green eyes peeks in at me.

“Tess?” I ask the sudden intruder. The tall wolf steps the rest of the way through the room, but strangely doesn’t close the door behind her. She’s back to wearing the same outfit I saw her in the first time I met her. Maybe that’s the closest thing she owns to a professional outfit.

But why is she here?

“Heeeeey buddy,” she says nervously. Uh-oh, I can sense the tension creeping into her tone. Whatever she’s here for, she’s not particularly happy about it.

Then the second mammal invades my room.

Her stature is much smaller than the wolf, but the implications of her presence hit me way harder.

It’s Laura.

The grey vixen is lacking the visage of leadership I know her for. She’s instead staring directly at the carpet and her one paw is nervously rubbing her other arm again. This is the shy Laura I had only seen when she had been talked down to.

I think her arm rubbing is a sign of her insecurity. Her shoulders are also slumped and her tail is tucked so tightly between her legs that she’s almost tripping on it. Oh, she DEFINITELY doesn’t want to be here right now.

I don’t blame her.

Her being here right now can only mean one thing.

“So, Winter, I’m really sorry for not stopping by a bit sooner to check in first, but the fennec next door was giving me some issues and made me fall behind. It’s been two weeks, and, well...your season is here. It actually started a few days ago, but I had the other rooms to take care of,” Tess explains with a guilty expression. Laura just stands next to her like she’s trying to become a statue just from standing as still as she can.

My heart pumps blood faster and faster as it all comes down on me.

Laura’s going to be my first.

Today, I’m going to have to get this poor vixen pregnant.

She’s going to be the first of twenty-two.

For over three weeks, I’m going to have to go through the daily sin of sleeping with an unwilling participant. And those unwilling participants are going to have the emotions burned into their heads of what having sex with a kit feels like.

“It’s okay…” I mumble, my eyes locked on the same vixen that I’m about to get to know very, very personally.

Laura gives me the tiniest glance of pain and breaks my heart all over again.

This place is truly hell.

And it will burn.


	13. The Season - Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: More sex with a minor incoming, still as vague as I can make it.

The silence between Laura and I is deafening.

Tess had excused herself earlier, saying that she had other things to attend to.

I don’t know if I believe her; I know she isn’t comfortable around me right now.

But I don’t blame her.

Since Tess’s departure, Laura has been standing against the wall, looking down at her paws with her arms hidden behind her back. She’s standing right in front of the two holes punched open by Bruce and Doc, though Bruce’s hole towers above her head.

I don’t know what to do or say to her.

Even if this was a consenting situation, which it isn’t, I wouldn’t know what to say to a vixen. What am I supposed to say to one who clearly doesn’t want to be near me but has no choice in the matter?

“Let’s have sex now so that you can get pregnant, have kits and get them taken away just to do it again in a year. Sound good?”

Ugh.

There’s not much I can do to get through to her. I just sit on the bed with my legs crossed, stroking my tail nervously. Playing with my tail was something I thought I grew out of. My parents had to try so many different methods to stop my anxious habit. Looks like I’m reverting back into some of my earlier childhood mindsets. Great. At least the fluffy nature of my white poofball of a tail is comforting.

Every so often, I peek up from the safety of my tail to get a better look at Laura. Unlike my mother, who’s a mix of a summer and winter coat, Laura’s coat is a deep summer. She’s a dark grey, which to me is weird to look at. I hadn’t actually seen a summer coat like this before in my life. She barely looks like an arctic fox. Her thinner coat and narrow face makes her resemble a darker colored red fox. The only real giveaway that she’s still an arctic is the round and stubby shape of her ears.

She’s also tall, at least for an arctic. I noticed before but hadn’t really thought about it. Is this why the others see her as the group leader? The more and more I look at her, the more I realize that she really doesn’t seem like the ideal image of what an arctic fox should be. So why is she here? Wouldn’t the fur farmers want arctic foxes that actually look like arctic foxes?

She’s wearing a plain white button shirt and some tan pants. Not very femine at all, but they suit her to a degree. I can imagine a female teacher wearing clothes like these if they weren’t too fond of dresses.

She keeps her eyes locked on the carpet like she’s in a trance. I can hardly tell she’s breathing. The ticking of the clock on the wall is starting to get on my nerves; my ears crave some other form of distraction to divert my attention anywhere else than the motionless fox plastered to my wall.

I fluff my tail a few more times.

She seems content to stay where she is for now, and I don’t really feel brave enough to coax her over to the bed. Tess mentioned that I would have to do this once a day, so that must mean we have a whole day to do the deed. That gives her plenty of time to wake back up.

But that leaves me with an unknown amount of time of doing nothing in this maddening silence. So basically it’s the same thing as I’ve had to put up with for the past two weeks but way worse because someone’s in here with me.

I need to read something.

My paw touches something smooth and I look down next to me. Ash’s notebook is resting right where Doc had set it down after tearing out that one page. Why had she torn out just one page anyway? She didn’t even take it anywhere or throw it out, it’s still crumpled up on the ground next to the bed.

Maybe she forgot it? I think I threw up everywhere right after she tore the page out.

I can check that out later when the noise of me getting off the bed wouldn’t be the only sound in the room. Instead, I pick the notebook up and open it again, hoping for something interesting to read. The fact that it’s just full of sex information isn’t lost on me, but I’m truly desperate for something to pass the time now.

Huh. I wonder…

I flip to the front few pages of the notebook and scan the index, looking for a certain name. The contents were written over time so there’s no alphabetical order, so it takes me a few moments to find what I’m looking for.

My claw hovers over the exact name I was hoping to find.

‘Laura.’

Ash used to be their tod, right? So maybe he wrote information for all of the vixens in here as well. I just hope that the Laura in the book isn’t just some other mammal who also happens to be named Laura.

My ears pick up the sound of a sharp intake of breath, but when I look up, Laura is still in the exact same position as I left her. My eyes fall back down onto the page open before me. It’s written in the same neat cursive, but I notice that the details are different.

‘Laura - One of the vixens, group leader’

‘Age - 25’

Her age had been crossed out numerous times and replaced. The earliest scribble I can see looks to be a shaky ‘17’.

‘Birthday - May 8th, REMEMBER BIRTHDAY TO CHEER UP’

May 8th? That’s...right around now, I think. I was only halfway through April when I was taken. Is she going to be turning 26 soon? Or has she already turned 26? The exact date is still unknown to me. But according to Ash, wishing her a happy birthday might make her feel a bit better. What other knowledge does my predecessor hold for me?

There’s no mention of the amount of sessions they’ve had. I guess that doesn’t really matter when you have to mate on schedule.

‘Notes - Hardest vixen to work with, so remember to be respectful. Doesn’t like having sex. Might be gay, DON’T ASK. Likes talking about life outside the farm. Make casual conversation to relax her. Very appreciative of shoulder rubs, ear rubs, paw rubs. MASSAGES IN GENERAL ARE A MUST. Mood falls quickly, so try to say things that make her feel like she’s doing a good job taking care of the rest of the vixens. Takes pride in leadership position. When talked into sex, try to finish quickly. Sex possibly causes her pain. Sometimes bleeds. Does well in the heat, but also can deal with cold. Let her choose the thermostat setting.’

Hold up, what? THERMOSTAT SETTING?! So there is one around here! She must know where it is! I’ll have to see where she goes to adjust it. If I can lower this damned hellfire of a temperature setting, that would be a giant step towards comfort for me. It also might keep the withdrawal itching at bay for longer amounts of time.

I glance at Laura and catch the slightest bit of movement from her head, like she had been looking at me but looked down when I moved my head towards her. The book in my paws catches my attention again and I continue reading.

‘Likes - Massages, cuddling, friendly activities like brushing, being called useful, hearing songs sung to her’

Dislikes - Any kind of sex I can offer, anything that reminds her of her lost kits, being told what to do, being disrespected in any way’

Under her dislikes are a few written features describing her physical appearance. I notice that he actually has a few drawings of her at the bottom of the page. Something I find interesting is that the sloppier, older looking drawings seem to be based off of a younger fox entirely. Are these what Laura used to look like when she was first taken? Just from the drawing, I can tell that she used to have a full winter coat. She was much fluffier back then, looking more like a lot of the younger girls in the vixen room. The most recent drawings display her looking almost exactly like she does now. Her outfit in one of the pictures is actually the same as she’s wearing currently. Woah, maybe it’s her mating outfit or something. I hope there’s no previous stains in it…

I look up at Laura once again and find that she’s looking right back at me. Her gaze is firm and piercing, but sad and unsure at the same time. I can’t imagine the feeling of being locked up for over eight years in this place and having to continue the torture with a kit instead of a full-grown tod. At least Ash was an adult and she didn’t have to hate herself for participating.

I close the notebook and set it back down next to me. The motion makes one of her ears flick but she otherwise keeps her gaze on me. Maybe she’s waiting for me to make the first move. Well, here it goes.

“So...it’s your birthday coming up?” I offer, the single thread of conversation catching her attention and snapping her back to the real world. Both of her ears shoot up and her eyes widen in surprise.

“Y-y...you know?” she asks shakily. I blink a few times, surprised by her sudden change in demeanor. At least I got her talking, now all I have to do is open her up...ugh.

“Someone told me,” I reply to her, shrugging my shoulders a bit. Her muzzle scrunches a bit and she looks back down at her paws, falling into deep thought.

“But…” she mumbles. “I didn’t tell anybody. The only one who knew was...Ash.” My ears fold back slightly and I get the hint that I may be playing with fire. Maybe trying to lie to Laura won’t be the best course of action. She seems like the kind of mammal who can sniff out a lie even if it’s in written form. Telling her the truth might be my best bet for gaining her trust.

“That’s pretty much right,” I explain and hold the notebook up. She examines it from her place against the wall but her eyesight must not be good enough to read the name on the cover from that distance. Her eyes narrow and she seems to be weighing her options. I maintain my place on the bed, not forcing her but definitely tempting her to come over.

I give the notebook a little shake.

Laura squeezes her eyes shut and lets out a shaky sigh. Finally, after over an hour of warming that specific section of carpet, she breaks away from the wall and comes closer to me. She’s rubbing her arms again, but at least this is progress.

Once she’s close enough, I hold the notebook up for her to read. Her eyes widen even further as she sees Ash’s name written on the cover. She snatches the book away from me in a moment, the sudden burst of motion startling me a bit.

She opens the first page and examines the vast amount of different drawings inside. A small smile tugs at her lips as she traces the artwork with her claw. I get the feeling that she might be experiencing something personal so I stay quiet and let her do what she wants.

After the first few pages of art, she’s smiling widely now. But that smile falls as she comes across the index. Her eyes scan through the names, widening every few seconds. Her claw stops on the spot I had recently found and suddenly she’s scrambling to find a certain page.

I already know what she’s looking for.

She flips the book to the same page I had been reading and scans it with wide, crazy eyes. She reads Ash’s description of herself, her mouth moving silently as she forms the words in her head. Another pang of hurt hits me as I recognize her habit as the same one my mother has been doing for years. Dad used to tease her about it when she read the paper in the morning, but she would always just find something to smack him in the head with.

One time, she threw a fork and it got stuck in his forehead.

My gaze falls down to the bed as I reminisce about family memories. Never again will I be able to see them act like that crazy couple that just so happens to be perfect for each other. At least the last moment they shared together was them just hugging each other and rocking side to side. I’m glad we got to stop home and say our goodbyes, even if we didn’t know they were goodbyes at the time.

I hope they’re okay. There’s nothing more in the world I want than to be back home with them.

My ears twitch lazily as I pick up the sounds of Laura flipping through the rest of the notebook. Might as well let her; the more she knows about my source of information, the less she can accuse me of knowing for no reason.

“So...you think you know all about me now, huh?” she asks me as she closes the notebook. My ears lower again as I pick up the accusatory tone she is throwing my way. My body freezes up and I suddenly don’t know what to say. I hate being put on the spot like this for something I don’t even want to do in the first place.

“...No...just something to start with…” I answer after a few awkward moments. She huffs and drops the book back down on the bed where it had been resting earlier. I keep my eyes lowered and my tail becomes the most interesting thing in the room.

I really want to curl up and hide, but I know the motion would only draw her attention to me fully. The less sound I make right now, the better.

She doesn’t walk back to her spot on the wall though. I can hear her slow, deep breaths from right next to me. I know she’s just standing there but I don’t dare look up to meet her gaze. The mask she wears, the firm and controlling version of herself, scares me. I’d much rather deal with the shy, insecure Laura. At least that way, we’d both be on the same page.

She finally lets out a sigh and I feel her weight compress the mattress next to me.

“He wasn’t wrong, though,” she finally says. My ears tilt towards her but I don’t face her. “About the sex, I mean. It always hurts me. And no, I’m not gay. I just don’t really feel much at all towards anybody, really.”

I feel brave enough now to turn to look at her. She’s giving me a sideways glance but I can tell she isn’t really focused on me. I watch as she nibbles on her lip for a few moments before continuing.

“Being here for as long as I have...it ruins any kind of good feelings towards intimacy I might have had. God, I was only a teen when they took me. I know Ash was here longer, but at least he was an adult when he got grabbed. And...oh, Winter, I can’t imagine what you must be going through right now. You’re only twelve, right?”

I nod slowly to her.

“I’m so fucking sorry that this is all happening to you…” she cringes and looks at me directly. I notice for the first time that her eyes are actually a little different from one another. Her right eye is a darker brown while her left eye is more of a hazel color. Both of the darker colors match her coat better than if she had bright blue eyes like mine or Ven’s.

Cool, kinda like my dad.

“Thanks...I’m doing okay, so far,” I tell her, surprised at how honest that statement is. Even after everything, I’ve actually been managing to find little moments of happiness that make the darker times not so unbearable. I’m really glad I got to meet Doc, Mina and Tess. I just wish I didn’t have to lose my dad in the process. But that only reinforces my idea that fate might have brought me here to do some good. If I end up helping everyone locked in here get out, wouldn’t losing a single arctic fox have been worth it? Well, two if you count Ash.

Laura stares at me strangely.

“What?” I ask after another few seconds of being gawked at.

“N-nothing, sorry. You just are taking this a lot better than I did when I was taken. I wouldn’t talk to anybody for months at first. It was actually Ash who got me to open up a bit.”

“How did he do that?” I inquire, my ears perked up now.

“It’s kind of embarrassing, but he actually just sang me some songs,” she says with a shy smile. I grow a smile to match hers and lift an eyebrow.

“Really?” I ask. She nods bashfully. “What songs?”

“That’s just it! I didn’t know any of them! He actually wrote a bunch himself. I was kind of hoping he had written some down in that notebook, but I guess he preferred to keep them to himself. Probably knew them by heart.”

“Huh,” I mumble. “What was he like?”

“Who, Ash?”

I nod.

“Well, he was a good tod, all things considered. He did what he had to do, even if they made him do some evil things. But I always could tell that it tore him up inside. Every time I was with him, he tried his best to make sure I was comfortable, even if he knew what he had to do to me.”

“What did he do to help make you comfortable?” I ask.

“Well, he figured out after a little while that I really like massages,” she answers. Silently, I uncurl myself from around my tail and sneak up behind the dark-coated vixen. Right as she’s about to say more, I reach up and place my paws on either shoulder. She jumps a bit at the sudden contact, but doesn’t pull away. At that point, it’s just another trip down memory lane for me. I had given my mother countless shoulder rubs, and had gotten quite good at it over the years. Beth had even asked me to rub her shoulders a few times and always enjoyed it. I’m not very familiar with ear or paw rubs, though. I can’t imagine they’re all that tricky to pick up, as long as I keep note of where my claws are at all times so that I don’t scratch her.

Laura shuffles nervously as I start the shoulder rub, but quickly sinks into relaxation. I change my motions every few minutes, focusing on areas that I notice her flinching at. She especially enjoys when I ball my fists and use my knuckles to rub her shoulder blades. In no time at all, she’s half-asleep, letting out content little coos and yips at my touch.

I stop the shoulder rub after a while and try my luck at giving her an ear rub. The ears, behind much more fragile and sensitive, demand that I pay special attention to my claws. I single extended claw could cause a tear in the thin skin. A bloody ear would ruin the entire experience.

I cup my paws on either ear and smooth the fur out leading to the tip. After repeating this motion a few times, I focus on the base of her ears and twirl them in slow circles. She lets out more coos and even leans her head back, letting me reach her favorite spots easier. I play with the fluff in her ear, careful not to stick any of my claws inside.

I hear a snore.

My ears flick at the sudden noise and I move around to see her face. It warms my heart a bit when I see that she is indeed asleep. Part of her weight is resting on me, which is probably why she hasn’t toppled back into the bed yet.

As much as I love how peaceful she looks, I know that we can’t go snoozing until we finish with our work for the day. We can sleep afterwards when the awkward stuff is done.

“Laura,” I say in her ear as I give her a gentle shake. She flinches but otherwise remains asleep. Oh boy, looks like we have a heavy sleeper here. I give her a more urgent shake and get the same result as the first time. Looks like I’m going to have to do something a bit more drastic.

Seeing the first thing I can reach, I clamp my teeth down over her right ear and give it a gentle nibble, just enough to draw her attention.

“MMPH!” she grunts and her eyes shoot open. I let go of her ear just as she pulls away from me and jumps down onto the carpet on high alert. My first instinct is to jump back further on the bed and curl myself into a defensive ball. Though my line of sight to her is limited now, I can see that she’s breathing heavily and seems to be panting with her whole mouth open. Her body is trembling for some reason and her tail is swishing from side to side with purpose.

“WH-...WHAT WAS THAT?” she demands, though her voice is strained due to her deep breathing. I perk my ears up and move a bit closer to her when I feel that she isn’t about to attack me. My own heart feels like it’s about to beat out of my chest, but I haven’t lost myself to my flight instincts yet, so that’s a plus.

“It...I just...chewed your ear to wake you up...you fell asleep,” I stutter cautiously. Her sudden standoffishness is concerning to me, but it might just be my previous traumas coming back to haunt me.

“You…” she tries to repeat. She doesn’t finish, and instead chooses to lift her paw up to her ear to feel the spot that’s still visibly damp from my teeth. As she touches it, her whole body shivers violently and her tail shoots straight out and puffs up.

“Are...you okay?” I ask her nervously. Her eyes flick to me and her tail starts swishing again, but this time even faster.

“Yeah, I think so. But if we’re going to do this thing, we have to do it NOW,” she demands firmly. My throat suddenly goes dry at the realization of what she’s talking about. Whatever I did to her ear must have triggered something feral in her and suddenly she wants the sex. Despite her previous statements about it always hurting, she seems to be ready to go.

When I look up at her again, she’s already struggling to slide her pants off.

“Wait!” I call out, trying to avert my eyes from her semi-nude form.

“WHAT?”

“The lights! You can turn the lights off!” I plead. She’s quiet for a moment before I hear her trying to hop to the switch with her pants still trapped around her thighs. She lets out the telltale yelp of a fox tripping and she lets out a thud on the floor at the same moment that the room is plunged into blackness.

My legs scramble to pull myself into a more comfortable position on the bed. As I squirm around, I can hear the sounds of clothing being yanked off and tossed to the side. I reach out and grab my pillow, trying to recreate the same position I had been in when I had been with Tess. What else do I need to do?

Oh, yeah, my shorts are still on.

Shit. Laura might be ready to go, but I’m sure as hell not.

I close my eyes tightly as I try to lose myself in the same scene with Fru Fru again. It’s a lot harder to focus, knowing that Laura is suddenly in a rush and I might have to meet her pace. If she doesn’t do this now, she might not be able to.

But slowly, my recollection of that night does the trick and I’m able to slide my shorts off with the same amount of frustration. I really have to remember to slide those down before thinking the sexy thoughts.

Once my tail is free and my bottom half is exposed, I feel Laura’s weight jump onto the bed with me. Something about the way she’s moving around in the dark seems very unlike her. She’s no longer the stern or even shy version of herself.

She seems feral. Savage. Driven by wild instincts.

I can hear her sniff around, trying to find my body in the dark. The feeling of being hunted overwhelms me and I feel my body locking up, trying to remain as silent as possible. She’s closing in on me now and I’m no longer sure that I want to be found. What if she’s actually gone full feral and tries to attack me? What if she’s no longer herself? What if-

A sudden gust of warm air touches my side and I know that she’s found me. I take a deep breath and hold it, not sure of what she is going to do next. If she decides to tear me apart, I hope she goes for the throat first so that I don’t have to experience being dismembered.

But no pain comes.

Instead, I feel her paws touch me at random spots, trying to figure out where she is relative to me. When her paws find either side of my head, I feel her body looming over me. Her warm breath flows down onto me as she sniffs me some more.

Oh shit, I forgot to use the pillow. My eyes shut tightly and I try my best to imagine that I’m in the safety of my den once again.

“Okay...ready…?” I hear Laura’s say softly down to me. The sound of her voice pulls me out of my terror and makes my body lose its tension.

She’s not out of her mind. She still has control. She’s not going to go savage on me.

“I think so…” I reply to her. I can’t see her, but I can feel her cringe just from the way she moves. Like Tess, I think that hearing such a youthful voice respond to a question like that must hurt her.

The familiar warm, wet feeling makes contact with me. But this time, it’s way hotter for some reason. If Tess was a lukewarm bath, Laura is a hot spring. The sweltering heat overtakes me quickly and I have to suppress the urge to cry out. Every single one of my claws digs into the sheets again and I ruin the bed just a little bit more.

Laura moves very slowly and seems to be holding her breath.

After a few more moments, she lets it out and sounds almost...relieved.

“Huh…” she says in a pondering tone. I tilt my head a bit, confused as to what might be running through her head. I had expected this to hurt her like Ash said, but she doesn’t seem to be in pain.

Her body isn’t trembling anymore and her breathing returns to a somewhat normal pace.

She continues her motions, but unlike Tess, doesn’t speed up. She maintains her slow, careful grinding and it makes it feel so much better to me. I don’t feel like I need to escape anymore. My claws slowly pull out of the sheets and I loosen up just a bit more. My paws find themselves on either side of Laura’s waist, just so I can feel a bit more in control of the movements.

After a while, I even dare to open my eyes. Luckily, I can’t see much. All I see is a shape hovering above me that’s slightly darker than the surrounding room. But seeing Laura above me like this makes everything seem more real.

It’s terrifying. But at the same time...it’s comforting.

This is it. This is what I have to do from now on.

It’s not so bad. It feels nice, even.

What I thought was going to be traumatizing or hurtful is just...mostly awkward. Most of the reservations about my actions come from the emotions tied to what sex is supposed to represent. We’re not together and we’re not even around the same age. Hell, Laura is about TWICE my age. But here we are, forced to do something that turns out to be one of the least-painful things I’ve had to experience in this place.

I’d rather do this forever than experience that first day of my capture over again.

Even Laura doesn’t seem to be minding this all that much. She’s getting a bit more into it, but still maintains the same speed. She’s actually starting to let out some tiny yips and moans as she goes.

Oh, crap. She’s pretty much waiting for me to finish. This isn’t really about her right now, is it? The sooner I finish, the sooner we can stop.

I quickly return to the Fru Fru memory and lose myself in the image of that night once again. The world around me fades away, but it’s no longer an escapism technique. I’m not trying to forget where I am anymore.

It takes me a bit longer to start feeling that tightening sensation in my muscles. I couldn’t fully commit to the memory like I did with Tess. I’m staying more in the moment and allowing myself to take in some of the surrounding details.

It’s actually Laura herself who sends me over the edge. I don’t know what she does, but the sudden clamping down of her internal muscles makes my head spin. I actually see the room light up a bit in the pitch black, but I know it’s just in my head.

I see stars!

With Tess, I wasn’t fully aware of what was going on when I finished. I don’t know how it felt or what happened, I just remember waking back up and seeing her crying on the edge of my bed.

This time, I’m fully in the moment as I reach my finishing point.

My toes curl and uncurl over and over as my body spasms. An overwhelming feeling of warmth washes over me and I can’t help the tiny squeaks that leave my throat. At the same time, Laura is still clamping down on me. It almost feels like she’s holding me in place.

After a few waves of familiar mind-numbing sensations, I let out a huff of air and feel my body give out. Above me, I can hear Laura working just as hard to catch her breath. I blink away the few remaining stars in my vision and look up to where I know she is. She’s looking back down at me, I’m sure of it.

I expect her to get off as quickly as she can, but she doesn’t. She just sits there, resting on me in a much more slouched, exhausted position. What is she waiting for?

She doesn’t want to do it again, does she?

I can still feel myself locked tightly inside of her.

“Are...are we done…?” I whisper to her. Her ears flick in the dark and she takes a deep breath before answering me.

“Yeah, we’re done…” she sighs. With my eyes now adjusted better for the darkness, I can see that she’s still wearing her button shirt, even though it’s halfway undone now. The very edges of her shapely chest are somewhat visible, but I can’t make out anything other than blurs of color.

“Should...you get off?” I ask timidly.

“Not yet, Winter. Give it a few more minutes…” she explains. What is holding us together? Is there something that happens during this part of sex? I’m not sure what we’re waiting for, but I follow her advice all the same.

I listen to the clock on the wall counting the minutes as they pass by. Slowly, I start to feel less and less like I’m locked in place inside her. Once I’m feeling back to the way I usually am, Laura slides off the side of me and rolls her way off of the bed.

My whole bottom half feels soggy. Ugh, I already need another shower, don’t I?

The sounds of clothes being put back on comes from Laura’s general direction. I get the feeling that the lights might be coming back on soon so I hurriedly pull my own shorts back up, despite the gross wet feeling.

Just as I manage to slide my tail through the hole and pull my shorts up the rest of the way, the lightswitch clicks back on and the room is illuminated once more. I have to shut my eyes for the first few seconds to let them get better used to the light.

When I look over at Laura, I see her smoothing her clothes back down. A lump forms in my throat and I don’t know what to say to her. She just had sex with a minor against her will. What do I tell her to make her feel better?

She isn’t looking at me.

I really don’t want her going back to standing against the wall like a statue again. We just went through something together and I feel we should be able to talk a little more openly about it. Everything that just happened is new and strange to me and I don’t understand most of the emotions bubbling under my skin.

“How…” I start, but have to cough to clear my throat. “How was it…?”

Her ears perk up but she doesn’t turn to me. My own ears start to fold behind me as I fear I may have upset her with what I had to do to get her in bed. I didn’t think that small bite to the ear would have affected her so much. Did I accidentally manipulate her biology somehow?

“It was...definitely sex with a kit,” she finally admits. I sit up and pull my tail around me again, trying to hide behind it. It sounds like she hated it. As much as I wanted to make her comfortable with what I had to do, it still hurt her. I guess I can’t really change the fact that her having sex with me would make her a rapist if we were anywhere else in Zootopia.

“Oh…” I sigh, ruffling the fur on my tail.

“But…” she continues. “It actually didn’t hurt. Maybe...maybe Ash was just too big for me. I think that your size might actually be better suited for me…”

My ears perk up and I watch her through my hiding spot behind my tail.

“How sad is that, huh? Why would my body be this way? Why am I so small that the only way I can enjoy sex is if I get with a kit?”

Uh-oh. She’s starting to crumble. I can feel it.

It’s like Tess all over again.

I jump off the bed and scamper up to her, wrapping my arms around her from behind. Even though she’s a good amount taller than me, I still manage to lock my arms around her waist. Just as I make contact, I can feel her starting to shake.

She still doesn’t look at me.

I can hear her voice choking up with restrained sobs.

“Winter...why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to all of us? What did we do wrong? What did we do to deserve this?” she cries, her legs starting to give out under her own weight. Not being strong enough to support her, I pull her back into a sitting position so that she’s resting on my lap again.

But this time, there’s nothing sexual about it.

I’m just trying to support a friend.

Eight years this poor vixen has been suffering. Eight years of being made to mate with a male far too big for her. Giving birth must be way harder on her body if she’s as small as she says she is. For over eight long years, she had to suffer through the annual process of constant pain, just for her efforts to be taken from her by the monsters who hold us here. All that anguish, all of the suffering, just to line the wallets of the pig who does nothing but torment us.

But despite all of that, she’s lived. She’s managed to become the leader of the other vixens, guiding them through the same struggles that she’s had to deal with for so long. She’s a fox that the others can look up to as a teacher; a shining example of strength.

She’s one tough cookie.

I doubt she’s ever let herself show such emotion in front of any of the others before. Is this the first time she’s been able to let out some of her pain to another mammal? Being in this room, even with me right under her, is probably the closest thing she’s had to privacy since she arrived.

The best thing I can do right now is be there for her.

I might not know much about these emotions, but I know how to comfort someone who is sad. Plus, these are emotions I actually know about. There hasn’t been a day so far since I was taken that didn’t have me questioning fate and its cruelty.

So many why’s with zero good answers. I had come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to come up with my own answers.

I maintain my grip around her and bury my face into her back. At the same time, I curl my toes around her leg and rub them the best that I can. It might not be much, but it’s the only way I can hold onto the much taller fox when she’s sitting on me like this.

For a long time after, I just sit and hold onto Laura as she has her breakdown. She tries to say more over time, but her speech keeps devolving into blubbers and whimpers. I don’t judge her at all for anything she does. I know my own panic attacks dwarf hers by a large margin.

I respond to stress with either violence or bolting.

She’s able to let everything out just with her tears and whines. I wish I had such control.

I unwrap my arms from around her after a while so that I can reach up and rub her ears again. Just like the last time, the act of smoothing her ears down has a great calming effect on her. It only takes minutes for her crying to slow down into a very minor case of the hiccups.

I take the time to enjoy the closeness to another. I don’t normally like heat, but body heat has taken on a new meaning around here. If I can be pressed against someone and they’re not trying to slice me to pieces, it means I’m safe. So I try to enjoy warm affection as often as I can. There’s no telling how much I’ll be getting anymore.

I wish I could give my mom another hug…

It occurs to me that Laura had turned her head to look down at me. The sounds of sadness apparently weren’t coming from her anymore.

When the heck did I start crying?

My emotions have been going bonkers lately and I’ve been crying subconsciously more and more. I don’t even know why I’m crying. Sure, I miss my mom and sister, but I’ve been missing them for three weeks now.

Why all of a sudden…?

I think I may just be a bit overwhelmed. The emotional rollercoaster of being one on one with basically a stranger, having sex with them, and then having to help them through a difficult mindset is a bit more than I was ready to handle for today.

Laura pulls herself off of my lap, but doesn’t stand back up. Instead, she reaches under me and lifts me onto her own lap, reversing the position.

Now I’m suddenly the little spoon and have a larger, older fox hugging me and keeping me safe from any danger. A few sniffles escape my muzzle but now that I’m aware of them, I’m able to calm myself back down. The affection is greatly appreciated, though.

But boy, are we both smelly.

A musky, damp smell enters my nose and I instinctively know that it’s from our activity. The same scent had been the one I had smelled on Tess’s breath when she trained me. I knew I recognized it from somewhere!

It’s partially my scent, but a very potent version of it. I know the smell from my alone times back home. Back then, however, I was always by myself and could always sneak off to the bathroom to clean up without anyone knowing.

With another mammal in the room, the scent is allowed to linger and grow in potency. Plus, it’s mixed with a spicier scent that I assume must belong to Laura. I know I’m too young to be enjoying such a tangy aroma, but...I can’t help it.

Something in my biology is already awake and doesn’t care that I’m not even a teen yet.

A paw lands on my head and starts rubbing my ears. A massive shiver runs through my body as I allow my head to lean into the attention. Just like how Laura responded to my rubbing, I also start to feel a wave of exhaustion running through me.

I don’t want to go to sleep, yet. I’m stinky.

“Nnnno!” I whine as I try to keep my eyes open. Laura chuckles weakly down at me, still trying to unclog her sinuses from her own crying. I struggle to crawl away from her, but she pulls me back onto her lap every time.

It becomes a game to us, me trying to pull away and her dragging me back.

We’re not actually trying to trap each other, of course. Both of us are tired as hell and are barely using any of our strength. But it’s still really fun. I’m able to play for the first time in weeks like a kit should be doing. It feels almost like I’m not even a captive.

If I try really hard, I can picture my mother in Laura’s place, laughing as she slides me around on the ground, refusing to let me stand back up. I laugh even harder, my face wet with joyful tears as she tickles me whenever she manages to pull me back.

Before I realize it, Laura and I are chasing each other around the room, shrieking playfully as we go. Our claws tear at the carpet and bedding, causing ripping sounds to echo everywhere we move to. She’s faster and has longer legs, but I’m smaller and more agile. I’m also able to fit places she can’t.

The game comes to a halt as I manage to trap myself behind the fridge. I can’t turn around or back up, and she can’t get in at me. I think I’ve won, but realise that I’ve only gotten myself stuck in a dark, dirty place.

As my breathing returns to normal and the urge in my gut to continue the game goes away, I notice something strange about the area back here. It’s dark, but the temperature is actually pleasant. There’s something that’s leaking cold air right next to me. What is it?

I struggle to turn my head to the side. Even in the dark, I can see it.

It’s a vent cover.

There’s cool, refreshing air flowing from it. Is this why the room is always so hot? Who put this fridge right here? I shuffle back a bit to get a better look. From the other side of the fridge, I can hear Laura scampering around, trying to find me still.

The vent is small. Too small for me to fit through, I think. And even if I could, there’s no way I could maneuver my body in a way to pull the cover off or push myself into it.

But it’s something to keep in mind for later. Maybe if I could find a small enough mammal…

“Winter?” Laura’s voice echoes from somewhere in the room.

“Back here!” I call out, the very tip of my tail waving outside the crook where my body is stuck. I hear claws moving closer to me. She sniffs around the corner of the fridge, finally able to see the mess I’ve gotten myself stuff in.

“You know, you really have to stop wedging yourself in places like this, Winter…” she groans as she reaches forward and wraps her paws around my hips. Thanks to her size and strength, she’s able to get me unstuck within only a few tugs. I pop out from behind the fridge covered in dirt and grime. Who knows the last time someone’s actually cleaned behind there?

“Oh, gross. You need a shower, big time,” Laura cringes as she gets an eyeful of my soiled coat. I give her an unamused glare and squirm out of her grip.

“That’s what I was going to do but you kept pulling me back!” I complain. She chuckles and watches as I stomp to the bathroom and lock the door behind me. I flick the light on and undress fully for the first time since this morning. Great, I’ll have to try to wash my clothes again, too.

Without Laura in the bathroom with me, I’m to take a breath and actually process what we did together.

So that was Day 1 of my season, huh? Is she pregnant now?

The split-second joy of creating life is extinguished when I remember where exactly I am. I probably won’t ever get to see any of the kits I father. Laura might see them, but they’ll get taken away eventually. Probably when they’re able to feed themselves.

So that was sex. It felt a lot different than when Tess did it to me.

This time was more feral...more...heated. The temperature inside her was definitely a lot higher.

Did I like it?

Hmm.

I guess? It wasn’t unpleasant besides being overwhelming at points. But it was a lot less stressful than the first time and the slower pace helped immensely. It was like the speed that I would go by myself, but hotter and wetter.

Above all, I’m glad I didn’t hurt Laura.

That was my worst fear going into this. According to Ash, sex always hurt her. But thanks to my smaller size, she was able to actually enjoy sex for once, I think.

There’s also a tingling in my mind telling me that she managed to finish, herself. Isn’t that some sort of achievement? I know that I don’t have to worry about that, but it brings a certain amount of pride to know that I did something to make her feel good, too.

Hey, wait...she called me small!

I’m not...that small.

Am I?

But hey, if it works for Laura, I guess it’s good enough. At least I didn’t make her bleed.

I step into the shower and relax immediately, the smell of our time together getting washed out of my coat and sent down the drain. I’m a bit sad to wash away the spicy smell, but I figure that I’m probably going to get to smell it a lot more in the coming weeks.

I’m going to have to do this...like twenty more times, after all.

One down, only a lot more to go.

Something Ash wrote about Laura comes to mind; She’s the hardest to deal with. If I could get through to her and successfully do my job, does that mean that the hardest part is over?

...No, I don’t think it is. The hardest part won’t be here until I hear about my kits being born. That day will come eventually and I have absolutely no idea what I’ll do with myself. I can already feel the urge to protect Laura as a mate hitting me. When I have twenty two litters being taken away from me and twenty two grieving mates to comfort…

How will I survive that?

I have no clue.

But Ash managed it for at least eight years. Probably a lot longer than that.

As I finish the shower and dry myself off, I hear a knock at the bathroom door.

“Hey Winter! Are you almost done? I want a wash, too!” Laura calls from the other side of the door. I dry myself off a bit quicker, not realizing that I was making her wait. I wouldn’t have spent so much time thinking if I knew she wanted a shower!

“Yeah! Hold on, almost done!” I reply. I make sure to leave one of the towels unused so that she’ll have something to dry off with. Her summer coat will make it much easier for her to clean up and get ready.

I throw my shorts back on but forsake the shirt in favor of getting out quicker. With my shirt bundled in my arm, I unlock the door and step back into the bright light of the main room. Laura is sitting on the bed, her legs crossed and bouncing as she waits.

“Go ahead! Sorry for taking so long,” I tell her as I walk out. Laura looks up from the notebook she had been reading and her eyes land immediately on my chest. She flinches a bit and tries to keep herself from staring.

“...Forgot about those…” she mumbles as her eyes examine my slowly healing scars. I look down at my chest and paw the wounds gently.

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t really hurt anymore unless I stretch the skin,” I assure her. She lifts a brow and sighs, still not happy to see how badly my father had diced me.

I walk by her and over to the dresser, where I try to find another shirt to wear that isn’t covered in fridge gunk. Laura doesn’t move for a few minutes, but eventually allows herself to hop down off of the bed. Her steps are a bit uneven, a tidbit I pick up thanks to my hearing.

My eyes glance over just as she walks into the bathroom, noticing that she’s walking a bit funny. Oh, shit. Maybe I did hurt her after all. Great, now I have that weighing on my conscience anyway. At least she didn’t bleed…

I can hear the shower turning on. The sound of the water drowns out anything else I might have been able to pick up through the door so I resign myself to sitting on the bed and letting my fur dry out the rest of the way.

The scent of Laura still lingers in the room but only faintly now.

I allow my mind to wander as I wait for her to finish in the bathroom. What now? Are we supposed to wait until tomorrow? Is Tess going to pick her up at some point?

Who is going to be my second?

Of all the vixens in the room, I only know the names of Ven and Laura. Every single other fox is a complete mystery to me. I’m just going to have to hope that Ash has information for the rest of them in his notebook so that I’ll have at least a fighting chance at making our sessions bearable.

I look forward to seeing Ven again. Out of everyone, she’s the one I oddly feel the safest around. Her quiet, passive nature is something I can heavily relate to.

Sex was okay this time. But what if I’m too small for some of the other vixens?

What if we're not compatible?

What if...I just can’t get some of them pregnant? 

The fear of causing one of them to be targeted by Boss hits me again. I’ll need to focus on making sure that every single one of them ends up with kits by the time I’m done here, for their sake more than my own.

If I can’t live for myself right now, then I’ll sure as hell live for them.

The sound of the shower stopping catches my attention. I listen for awhile as Laura dries herself off and dresses herself. But she doesn’t dress herself for long, and I soon figure out why.

When she unlocks the doors and steps back out into the room, she isn’t wearing her top. My face heats up as I see her exposed chest, nipples and all. A small yip of embarrassment leaves my mouth and I scramble to hide under my pillow.

The sudden motion catches Laura’s attention. I can’t see her anymore from my hiding spot, but I can hear her scoff.

“Really, Winter...you ARE a kit. Is this why you wanted me to turn the lights off?” she asks as she moves around the room. She steps into the kitchen and I hear the fridge opening.

The cracking sound of a water bottle being opened rings in my ears.

That’s one of my last pure water bottles! Dang it.

“I can’t help it! I’m not used to seeing...naked mammals…” I stumble over my words.

“I bet. But you’ll make it a LOT easier on yourself if you just get used to it. You’ll be seeing a lot of these over time,” she tells me. She sounds like she’s shaking something from side to side, but I can’t see what.

“Maybe later…” I mumble.

“Okay, then. I won’t push you. You ARE only twelve after all…” she admits.

“So what now?” I ash, though my voice is muffled under the pillow so I have to shout.

“Now, we can chill out. This normally takes a lot longer. Tess won’t be back here to swap us out until tomorrow morning. So until then, we can sleep, talk or do other stuff. Your choice, really.”

“Swap out? So she’s bringing my second tomorrow when she comes to get you?”

“Yep, that’s how it usually goes. One goes out, the next comes in.”

She walks back over to the side of the bed and I hear a tin being cracked open. Seems she didn’t mind helping herself to some fish. How do the vixens get their food, anyway? Their room doesn’t have a fridge like mine does.

“Do you know who the next one is?” I ask shyly, hoping to a certain degree that she might say Ven.

“Not really, it’s up to the vixens and Tess. They can volunteer or Tess can choose for them. And no offense, Winter, but none of us were in that big of a hurry to fuck you.”

Ouch, but I get it. I’m a kit and they’re vixens. Some of them would probably rather adopt me than let me screw them.

“Do...do you think I’ll do okay?”

Laura looks me straight in the eyes and gives me a gentle smile.

“Winter, you’re a sweetheart. I never gave Ash an easy time, even when he used his tricks on me to calm me down. He always spent most of the day trying to coax me into bed but I always gave him hell. But you ended up getting the deed done in, what, an hour? I think you’ll be fine. Just give us some time to come to terms with the fact that we’re all going to have to...you know, fuck you. I heard from some of the vixens that you actually resemble some of the kits they had that got taken away, so...expect some tears, is all I can tell you.”

I nod along as she explains the situation to me.

Having a crying session for each vixen that walks in doesn’t sound that fun, but...I’ll do what I have to if it means keeping them safe.

Just until I can find a way out for everyone.

I need to contact Mr. Big somehow. He’ll know how to bring this place to its knees.

“So what do you feel like doing?” Laura asks me. A yawns escape my lips just as she asks, answering her question for her. She smirks and hops on the bed with me. The sudden closement brings some heat back to my face.

“Same here, Winter. Wouldn’t mind a nap. Don’t care what time it is, mating always takes a lot out of you, you know?”

“Umm…” I start to reply.

“Right, right...sorry, you don’t know,” she answers bashfully. As she gets closer, I smell the same fur conditioner in her coat that covers mine. It’s Ash’s scent and it just reminds me that whatever I do here in this room, and to the vixens, I’m just a kit following in the pawprints of someone much more experienced.

This is Ash’s room. These vixens shouldn’t belong to anyone, but now they are mine.

Laura gets herself into a comfy position next to me. I’m content to stay where I am, but she isn’t having any of that. With one arm, she slides my body into hers and shares her body heat once again. I don’t squirm to get away from her this time. We’re not smelly or dirty anymore, and there’s really nothing better for either of us to do than to enjoy the silence.

The cycle is going to begin again in the morning, but we have plenty of time to relax until then.

I just hope that my next session goes as well as this one did.

I hope the next vixen is as nice as Laura turned out to be.

Laura was the most intimidating to me up until this morning. But after spending some time with her, I’m able to see that she’s a lot deeper than her mask of responsibility would imply.

She’s actually pretty sweet.

I don’t even care that she’s spooning me without her shirt on.

Wait, what?


	14. The Season - Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same warnings but it's more vague.

The sound of the shower provides a pleasant enough white noise to listen to while I scribble down the details from the previous day in Ash’s notebook. I try to fit in my own little details in cursive as neatly as his, but I haven’t really used cursive since primary school. Plus, there’s not all that much space at the bottom of the page since he took up most of the blank space with his sketches of the vixen described in the notes.

I still feel a bit sticky from the previous night, but I’m pretty used to it at this point.

The shower will be available soon.

I usually take my shower first in the morning, but she insisted on going first.

Maybe she wanted to use the hot water? She’s free to, since I blast my water at the coldest setting anyway. Nothing wakes me up or refreshes me like a nice, ice cold shower to wash away the grime and tears from each day.

I idly tap my lip with the end of the pen, trying to think of what else to write here. Ash was pretty good about summarizing the little quirks and details of everyone. After each experience, there isn’t all that much for me to add.

Unless it’s for one of the first time girls, of course.

The ones captured within the last year had nothing written about them in the notebook at all, so it was up to me to make their own pages at the very back of the notebook. Luckily there are only three new vixens so I wasn’t too pressed for space.

The notebook is actually full now. Everything else I write has to be delegated to the sides of pages and what little white space I can find.

The shower stops. She took a lot longer than the rest usually do.

My ears rotate to capture the sounds of a faint humming coming from the other side of the door. A small smile creeps onto my muzzle as the feeling of relief tingles down my back.

Good, she’s in decent spirits after last night.

I was worried.

Out of them all, Protea handled the experience the worst of all.

Even compared to the vixens who had been mothers outside of the farm and who told me that I resembled their sons or even daughters, Protea was the one that hurt me the most to work with. Ash thought Laura was hard to work with? She might have been stubborn at first, but Laura was seasoned and knew what to expect.

Protea has only been here since last season.

She’s had her kits taken from her only once before.

And seeing me under her last night triggered something in her. Maybe I resemble one of her lost kits. Maybe just the thought of having to go through the whole ordeal again was too much for her to bear. All I know is that I spent most of the night trying to calm her down with a multitude of the tricks I’ve picked up from supporting the rest of the girls.

I look back down at the page.

‘Protea - One of the vixens, one of the flower girls’

It had been explained to me that about eight of the younger vixens in the room had gotten together and given themselves fake names based on flower culture. The names given were to inspire both pride in themselves and also hope for the future. The older vixens, all the summer coats, didn’t bother with the flower names and just stuck with the random fake names they gave themselves.

Maybe their original fake names have sentimental value to them, like Winter does to me. Now, I don’t know much about flowers and their cultural meanings. It has so far been up to each of the vixens to explain their given names and what’s special about them.

For instance, Daisy is named after her innocence, being one of the first timers and all. The day between us had been one of the most awkward, since I basically had to teach her about what was going on.

Me, a kit!

She’s only around Ven’s age, but still!

I figured that Tess would have given her some sort of training of her own, but nope. It seems it’s just the tod that needs to be checked out, and all the vixens are expected to do is lay there and take it. This place is so backwards that it’s practically upside-down.

‘Age - 17’

I scribble out her original age and change it to 18.

‘Birthday - Won’t tell me’

So I don’t know if she’s 18 just yet, but she’s going to be soon if she’s not. From the way Ash is writing about her, I can tell that Protea has gone through a massive change in attitude since her first season.

Becoming a mother and then losing the kits will do that to a fox.

‘Notes - Young upon arrival, hasn’t had sex before. Very talkative, open to discussing many topics. Keep conversation going to keep her mind off of task. Takes a long time to get to bed. Tries to talk her way out of sex. She will PANIC if pushed too quickly. Give her space if she needs to calm down. Eventually she will come to bed if you let her do it on her own. DON’T RUSH HER. Very shy once in bed. Enjoys cuddling. GO SLOW. Watch her eyes, when they close, wait a minute. When they open, she is ready to go further.Tail will move when in pain, wait for tail to stop. VERY LOUD. Do not put ears near her mouth, she will whine! Like to talk during sex once she gets going. Don’t have to respond, she is talking to herself as a distraction. Listen but don’t interrupt. Answer if given a direct question. Kissing calms her down greatly. SHOW AFFECTION.’

Who is this vixen he’s writing about? It definitely can’t be the same fox who Tess had to carry into my room yesterday. When the wolf came in with a bundle of white fur under her arm, I had a moment of panic at the thought that I was being shown someone’s pelt. But the bundle started kicking and squirming when I spoke, so that fear was replaced with a different one.

Protea didn’t want to be there and basically refused to participate.

Tess had left shortly after dropping off my partner for the day and taking back the previous vixen. She was not around to help me get through to the young vixen.

It took every trick I had picked up and several rereads of Ash’s notebook to finally get her to come to bed. In the end, all I ended up doing was laying under the covers in my bed. She came to me after a couple of hours of sulking and she finally got on top of me.

But thanks to her following meltdown, we didn’t actually have sex until early this morning.

Now my eyes sting from exhaustion and my vision is blurred from lack of sleep.

But at least Protea is doing better.

With a click, the bathroom door opens and the vixen in question walks out with her white fur still messy and damp. The lack of a blow dryer had become the number one issue to solve in my mind. Pretty much every white-furred vixen had filed a complaint to me about the lack of ability to finish drying off in the morning. I guess they must have their own blow dryer back in the vixen room.

Protea meets my gaze and gives me a tiny, but present smile. I blink sleepily back at her and her smile turns into a grin of apology.

“Sorry for last night, Winter…” she says quietly. In contrast to what Ash wrote about her during her first season with him, Protea is a much more secluded, quiet fox now. The apology that had just left her muzzle makes up about half of the words she’s spoken to me so far.

I don’t count the screaming and sobbing from last night.

Those weren’t words, those were guttural wails of pain and trauma. I’ve done the same thing before so I know that when a fox lets out that kind of sound, they’re no longer in control of their body. They are only a slave to their emotions.

“It’s okay,” I yawn back at her, looking back at my own section at the bottom of Protea’s page.

‘Winter’s Notes - Quiet and withdrawn. No longer chatty or loud, besides for when she screams. Still needs to be left on her own to work through the process at her own speed. Had to wait on the bed for her to come to me. She would not respond to my attempts to talk to her. I remember seeing her hanging off of Tess’s leg back in the vixen room, so she must not always be so solitary. Maybe it’s because she’s in this room with me. I finished as quickly as I could but we still couldn’t separate for a while. Thanks, fox biology.’

In comparison to Ash’s notes, mine are definitely more personal and tell of an experience rather than a list of traits. I preferred the less choppy feeling of being able to describe an actual encounter with the vixen. To me, it makes her seem less like a product and more like a mammal with feelings. Nothing against Ash, but his notes read like receipts.

Before Protea can come closer and see the intimate details I’ve written about her, I snap the notebook shut and tuck the pen back into the spiral binding. I hop over to the dresser, sidestepping Protea as I go, and slide the notebook back under the large piece of wooden furniture. Instead of using the top shelf to hide the book like Ash had, I’ve taken to just using the tiny bit of space between the dresser and the ground. Why would any of the mammals running this place look down there? Most of them are too big to even consider getting on their knees to check for randomly hidden objects as thin as a notebook.

Three weeks.

It’s been three weeks of this.

Every day, it’s the same routine but with a different fox.

Tess arrives with a new vixen and escorts the previous vixen back to their room.

Awkward meeting with someone I’ve met only once before, and never face-to-face.

Traumatizing experience with sex that usually ends up with me having to comfort a crying vixen.

Post-coital interaction that lets us actually get to know each other a bit.

Sleepy time with lots of cuddling.

Morning shower, always separate. They use hot water for some reason.

Tess arrives again and the process repeats.

Protea was the twenty-first one I’ve been with so far.

Again proving Ash wrong, the vixens only got harder to work with as the days went on. Since they were somewhat able to decide who went first, this created a pattern where the more experienced foxes were okay with going early and the younger, more reluctant foxes tried to hold out until the very end.

This meant the first week or so wasn’t bad. All of the summer-coated vixens went first. None of them had flower based names.

After Laura, it was Vallerie. She went through the process like it was just another day for her, but did cringe when she had to finally climb into bed with me. I asked her to turn the lights off and she was grateful that she didn’t have to see me. She was even older than Laura but had only been captured a few years ago. On the outside, she was a shining example of strength and perseverance. However, she didn’t open up enough to let me see if there was anything hidden under that exterior. She did rub my back until I fell asleep that night, though. I think she might have been one of the mothers who have still-living children outside the farm and being able to show a kit some affection did her troubled mind some good. She left the next morning casually and with little ceremony.

After Vallerie, the next few foxes all behaved rather similarly. It seems that the older foxes are much better at handling their feelings and can hold in any sorrow in their hearts, even if it’s probably just for my sake.

Agnes was very gentle with me and made sure to ask me if I was alright every few minutes. She’s also a great singer and sang me to sleep within minutes of us finishing.

Waverly was much more sullen about the affair, but participated anyway. She was a little bit rougher with me but was experienced enough to make me finish much quicker. Most of her time in the room was spent trying to sleep the day away in hopes of tomorrow being easier. She did play with my tail a bit in her sleep, though. Maybe she missed how fluffy hers used to be when she lived in Tundratown.

Eve is one of the vixens I can definitely tell was a mother on the outside. She did everything my own mother used to do to calm me down and help me through the night. This was actually a very weird experience and I kept getting the feeling it was my mother on top of me. This night ended up taking me the longest to finish out of any of them.

The night with Natasha was the first time I decided to keep the lights on. She was afraid of the dark, thanks to trauma after being captured at night, so I didn’t make her plunge herself into her deepest fear just for some extra comfort on my end. While I was a bit shy about seeing her naked body swaying above me, I have to admit that the view helped me finish a bit quicker. She refused to look down at me though, and instead drifted off into her own memories. She was the first one since Laura to actually clamp down on me and finish herself. Yes, I saw stars again.

The days started to blend together at that point.

The last three summer coats consisted of Jillian, Kara and the most awkward of them all, Bethany. That’s right, I had to breed with a vixen who shares the same name and tomboyish personality as my sister. I’m just thankful their coats are so different, otherwise my mind might have been tricked into thinking I was fucking a future version of Beth.

Ugh, no.

After the summers, there were the three mixed coats.

Ironically, the first one to show up at my door was named Pepper. Too bad my name’s not Salt. But seeing as all of their names are fake, it makes sense that she would name herself something to match her coat.

She was my introduction back down into the rabbit hole of depression and emotional instability. She tried her hardest to stay stoic about what she had to do with me, but the moment she saw me sliding my shorts down, she bolted and locked herself in the bathroom for hours. I ended up getting to know her from the other side of the door. That’s actually a bit of a step up from my usual method. Sex is not a good way to get a first impression of someone, especially if it’s sex that neither party wants. We both sat against either side of the door and just talked for a while about random stuff. She told me about how she got taken from her parents during a trip to see some singers. My ears did their best to pick up her story through the wooden door and I listened intently, offering warm words along the way. I even got her to laugh after a little while. But my mood dropped when the conversation returned to me and how I got here.

She was genuinely curious and didn’t mean any harm, I know. But that still didn’t stop me my emotions from working their way back to the surface. If Tess hadn’t been resupplying me with peace, I probably would have lost it at this point. She was trying to wean me off of it with smaller and smaller amounts. So the itching was stopped each time but emotions were free to bring me back down to the pits of despair. Pepper is much more productive as a supporter and quickly left the seclusion of the bathroom in order to comfort me as soon as she started hearing my sniffles. I didn’t cry, but I came really close. Thanks to our mutual understanding of our pain, we were able to finish our duty quickly and without further turmoil.

Pepper even gave me a kiss afterwards.

Not a cheek kiss, but an actual muzzle-to-muzzle smooch.

It felt way different than when Fru Fru did it. I could barely feel the arctic shrew’s lips on mine and it was more the fact that she kissed me that stunned me so.

But Pepper’s kiss was full of warmth and understanding. It was almost like a spark of comradery passed between us in that moment. She had a better idea of where I was in this mess and I knew why she acted like she did. She’s just young and fragile like most of the mammals in this place.

Including myself.

Erin and Sharon, to my surprise, turned out to be twins. They aren’t identical though, Erin being a few minutes older and quite a bit taller than her sister. Strangely enough, Sharon is much more bossy than her shy older twin. When Tess arrived to drop them off, Sharon had to forcefully shove her sister through the door.

This was the only day with two vixens at once.

Thankfully, they didn’t come together because of some sort of kink or something. Sharon had apparently been accompanying her twin for years now because she knew Erin needed the support to actually participate. All I could keep thinking was that they must have some sort of twin bond that I’ll never understand. I don’t know if I’d be able to perform in bed if I had my sister staring at me within biting distance.

Erin needed tons of support to even crawl into bed with me. Both being around 30 years of age, seeing someone so young waiting for them must have been quite a disturbing sight. Sharon even had a hard time at first, despite her impatient and abrasive personality. Once I convinced them that I was pretty much used to it at that point, they got over the social stigmas of sleeping with a kit and we did what we had to do.

Erin took several showers while Sharon had her turn with me. Sharon ended up having to pick the lock with her claws so that she could get her own shower.

I’ll have to remember that she can do that.

Once the twins came and went, then the winter started.

There are 10 in total, but only two of them have existing fake names. The one I was with first, Sonia, was a bit of a mixed bag when it came to outer attitude. She strutted in like she owned the place, causing even Tess to give her a weird glance. She kept her nose in the air the whole time I tried talking to her, keeping her arms folded in what I think was supposed to be a defiant gesture.

Thanks to Ash, I found out that giving her a kiss under the chin apparently makes her prima donna persona melt away. The kiss probably would have been more effective if I wasn’t half her age, but my attempt at affection seemed to stir something in her chest regardless. I don’t know what it was that she wanted from me in the beginning, but she quickly gave up her pursuit of it once she remembered my age. Maybe she had some sort of ritual with Ash from the years before. I don’t really want to know.

The rest of the winter-coats, calling themselves ‘the flower girls,’ consist of 8 of the remaining vixens. As mentioned before, they all got together at one point or another and named themselves after flowers. And when new foxes come in, they get the same option.

According to Sonia, the one who came up with the idea of the flower naming thing, it’s not a clique. Or at least, it’s not meant to be.

It’s just a fun little thing they do to inspire hope in those who are new to the farm.

Besides Daisy and Protea, I had sessions with Tulip, Heather, Lily, Lavender, Azalea and Jasmine. The flower girls all being much closer to my own age than the summer coats or mixed coats, the last week and a half spent with them was much more stressful for all parties involved. Some of the vixens are brand new to the farm and sex in general, and the rest are at the very least inexperienced. I think the longest any of them have been active in the vixen room is for around three years.

With them, I didn’t have the experience of a seasoned vixen to fall back on each day.

It meant a lot of explaining, a lot of crying and a lot of denial.

For pretty much every winter coat, I ended up having to figure out a way to calm a sobbing vixen before each night was over. But once I got through to each girl, they turned out to all be sweet and caring. None of them enjoyed the idea of having to sleep with a kit of course, but I managed to coax a few into enjoying themselves despite my age.

For me, sex is already turning into just a means to proceed to the next challenge.

That feeling of dread upon seeing a vixen undress?

That’s gone.

That fear of being seen naked by a much older fox?

That went away within the first week.

It’s more of just a business now. Each day, a vixen arrives, I perform a service with or without some added emotional support, and then they leave the morning after. The thought that sex was supposed to be this awesome, spectacular thing that shows the passion between two willing lovers just seems silly to me now.

It’s not boring, but it’s definitely not special anymore.

I even stopped thinking about that night with Fru Fru. What used to be a deep, dark secret moment shared between us by accident seems trivial by comparison to what I’ve seen. So an arctic shrew girl played with herself next to my head in her sleep.

So what?

I’ve been inside over twenty older vixens now.

I know the sights, smells and sounds by heart.

Instead of trying to focus on a memory to get myself to finish, I just have to look up at the beautiful creatures looming over me and my body does the rest of the work. If I can get them to finish as well, then great. But it’s not the end of the world if they’d rather climb off of me as soon as my body allows them to.

...I feel like a part of me that used to be blooming is just straight up dead now.

Am I supposed to feel this way?

Should sex feel this empty?

I honestly look forward to the time after the sex much more, when I get to connect with the vixens as they normally are. The fully-clothed, post-coital activities are so much more fun and relaxing to me.

Natasha taught me what ‘post-coital’ meant when I was with her. I’ve been using it a lot because it’s my very favorite time of each day.

Why would I look forward to sex when the back rubs, scratches, songs and games we play after the sex are so much more enjoyable for everyone?

Sex is the work.

The post-coitus is the play.

But thanks to how long it took to convince Protea to do her work, we didn’t have time for any play. And because of that, I know her the least out of all of the vixens. We didn’t really get any time to bond, since the day was spent screaming and crying.

Looking at her now, though, she’s like a completely different fox.

She’s on the bed next to me, rolling around on the decently-torn comforter in an effort to dry herself off some more. I blink sleepily over at her, the ache in my muscles coming back as I’m forced to keep myself from tipping over.

The physical exhaustion from the past three weeks is hitting me hard. My body feels like it’s about to give out at any moment. My back, legs and arms suffer the most because of the different positions I had to curl myself into in order to perform.

I’m not even done yet.

There’s one more vixen to go before my season is over.

When I first started, she was the one I was looking forward to seeing the most.

But now I can’t help but dread seeing her.

Ven is the last vixen.

Throughout the last few weeks, I realized that the basic order of the vixens turned out to be most willing to least willing. Each day was a harder challenge, thanks in part to the anxiety of meeting someone closer to my age with even less experience than me.

Protea was enough to drain my body of most of its energy and deprive me of sleep.

If the established order of difficulty is to be followed, then Ven wants to see me even less than Protea did. And Protea threw a water bottle at me.

I thought Ven and I hit it off pretty good despite the low amount of words shared between us. She sang me down from a panic attack and snuggled me to sleep. Then she sat down next to me while the rest of the room lost its mind.

But apparently she has an even greater desire than Protea to wait just a little bit longer.

Does she dislike me?

Did I do something to her while I was out of sorts?

I don’t remember if I said anything mean to her or not.

So why, out of all the vixens, is she last…?

It hurts me deeper the more I think about it.

Next to me, Protea finally stops rocking the bed and basically passes out. She snores. She’s almost cute enough to forgive how badly she kicked my ass yesterday. I’d lay down with her, but I really need a shower of my own. I stink of not only the sex, but also the can of fish she knocked out of my paws after I tried to give it to her.

As I slide off the bed, I almost lose my balance. My legs are practically jelly from all the strenuous use they’ve been put through recently.

I’m able to right myself and shuffle my way into the steamy bathroom, my tail dragging limply behind me. A wave of humid air slaps me in the face and I stop for a moment to shiver away the discomfort.

But just as I’m about to close the door, a familiar knock on wood rings out and the door to my room opens. I give the shower a longing look and let out a tired sigh, resigning myself to having no rest between sessions.

I walk back out of the bathroom and close the door behind me, allowing myself to enter the world of tedium once again. Everything goes blurry so I have to rub my eyes to allow my vision to focus.

Once I’m able to see again, I notice that Protea is awake and Tess is standing in the doorway, giving me a concerned glance. The tall wolf is wearing a hoodie today, a pretty daring choice for her. If I had one here and the temperature was more agreeable, I’d be wearing a hoodie too.

I still never found out where the damned thermostat is. Laura was the only one who seemed to know and everyone else I asked just shrugged at me. Tess doesn’t even know. How does Tess not know?! Aren’t all these rooms built pretty much the same?

Oy.

The sound of Protea sliding off the bed and hitting the carpet snap me back into the waking world. Wow, I think I almost fell asleep standing up just then. 

“So...you guys do okay?” Tess asks nervously. Protea looks down at her paws shamefully and I just respond by crawling onto the bed and tucking myself in. Tess seems to work out how the night went just by the state of us and cringes. “Oof. Okay, but you got everything done that you needed to, right?”

“Yes…” Protea mumbles to the carpet. I can see Tess nodding her head in the very corner of my vision but I don’t really feel like looking at her right now. She’s pretty much become the daily reminder of where I am and what I’m meant to be. She brings the next hardship with her and takes away someone I’ve just gotten to know and like.

It’s a recurring theme around here for sure.

“Good, good...well, one more day, buddy. Think you got it in you?” the wolf asks from her spot in the doorway. I respond with a long, drawn out huff of exhaustion. I’m not facing her anymore so I can’t tell if she’s giving me a look or not.

“C’mon, Protea, let’s get you back to the room. Ven, your turn.”

My ears flop back against my head at the mention of remaining vixen. I had almost forgotten that she was coming today. The feelings of guilt, confusion and hurt come rushing back to the surface and keep me awake despite my body’s cries for rest.

I don’t hear her voice, but I can just barely make out the sounds of claws walking across carpet. The steps are slow and careful, like she’s trying to sneak in. Does she not want me to know that she’s there?

She must really not want to see me.

I bury my muzzle into the pillow and try to hide, the first time I’ve done so in weeks.

“Okay, there you go. Go easy on him, he’s had a rough few weeks. Oh, and Winter?” Tess calls my name and I grunt in response. “I know I keep asking you, but...it’s getting down the wire now. Have you thought of anything else you can do after the season ends?”

Ugh. This again. I know it’s important and the alternate might be worse than anything I’ve been through so far, but I need rest! How am I supposed to think of something to sell to the farmers when it’s been constant, non-stop breeding? I have enough running through my mind all the time! The vixens have needed so much support and attention that I’ve barely gotten time to think of my own problems. Despite our ages, it honestly feels like I’m being forced to act as if I’m the adult in the situation.

Maybe that’s another part of the punishment for causing such a mess when I arrived here.

I’m not just filling in for Ash as a breeder, but also as a full-grown tod watching over almost two-dozen other foxes. I have to act older than I am, or everything will fall apart.

At least me doing this means that the vixens won’t be targeted.

“Winter?”

Oh, right.

“Not yet,” I mumble into the pillow, just loud enough for her to hear. Tess lets out a ‘tch’ sound and grumbles into her paws.

“Bud, please, you have to try. If you don’t, I can’t promise that they won’t just rent you out like they did Ash!” Tess pleads. I respond to her by folding the pillow around my head and blocking out her voice completely. A distant mumble tingles my ears, but ends after she realizes that I’m no longer listening. After about a minute or so, the sound of the door slamming jolts me awake. Did I piss her off?

Another thing to weigh heavily on my conscience. I guess Tess hates me now, too.

I just want to stop feeling emotions again.

Maybe if I skip a dose of peace but tell her I took it, I can double up and get the full effect.

That glorious feeling of calm and contentment is sorely missed.

Maybe if I skip enough, I can just overdose and stop the pain forever.

The room is quiet for a while, letting me stew in my darkening thoughts. The lack of sleep is doing my mental health no favors whatsoever. Despite knowing that I still have a job to do, I want nothing more than to just curl up and sleep forever.

I’m tired. Of everything.

“Mm!”

I feel a paw on my back and my body freezes. Oh, shit, there’s someone in the room with me. Wait, I already knew that…

Once I summon enough energy to move, I let my body roll back over so that I’m facing Ven. Her muzzle is close to mine; close enough that I can see nothing but her wide blue eyes staring back. My ears are locked back tight against my head.

Doesn’t she hate me? Why is she so close?

My eyes, as sore and unfocused as they are, can plainly see that she doesn’t hold any sort of hostile expression or anxious posture.

She just looks pleasant.

She’s wearing a massively oversized shirt that functions more like a dress for her. It’s faded yellow with a massive sunflower in the middle, which is distorted somewhat thanks to the bulging shape of her body.

After being with so many lithe, perfectly figured vixens, Ven’s body is enough of a change in my routine to transfix me just like the first time we met. My eyes examine her up and down, trying hard to process just how someone like her can exist. How can she be so shapely while having a head just as narrow as the rest of the foxes I’ve been with?

It doesn’t make sense to me.

But I don’t think she’s unsightly at all. Quite the opposite, actually.

Instead of the sharp, boney look that I’ve gotten used to, Ven looks so...soft. She’s like if a fox and a pillow had a kit together. I just want to squeeze her tight and bury my face into her so I can hide forever.

She looks so comfy!

But the lingering feelings of guilt keep me from reaching out to her.

She blinks at me, her eyes taking in my features just as mine had taken in hers. A slight tilt in her brow forms over the next few moments, turning into a full worried expression. I don’t know what I must look like right now. I’ve been through hell recently and I haven’t even gotten a chance to shower or sleep. And I probably stink really bad.

But if I look half as tired as I feel, then I must be quite a sight. I can’t even open my eyes all the way to look at her. The muscles are too drained to respond.

Ven leans forward, gives me a quick sniff and recoils with a scrunched muzzle.

Yeah, I could have told her that was a bad idea.

But she’s apparently not willing to leave me smelling like the fish-stained sex doll that I am.

Without any words or gestures, she reaches in and latches onto me. Using a surprising amount of strength that defies her age and size, she hauls me out of the bed and stomps forward towards the bathroom with purpose. I resign myself to dangling limpy in her grip, unwilling and unable to pull myself away from her.

Her squishy warmth is something that I didn’t know I was desperately missing.

The world blurs around me as Ven gets to work. She places me on the floor gently and starts undressing me. A month ago, this act would shock and embarrass the hell out of me. But thanks to how often I’ve been nude around others lately, it takes a few moments to register to me that I’m sitting on the floor with my clothes flung off to the side. It’s barely enough of a change to keep me awake.

Her paws wrap under me again and now my naked body is squeezed against her shirt. Out of muscle reflex, I casually start grinding against the plushness of her warm body. She lets out a little squeak and quickens her pace. I’m placed in a sitting position in the tub and the water is turned on.

What DOES wake me up is the feeling of hot water pooling around my rear and legs. In a moment of lucidity, I spin around and slam the ‘Hot’ dial on the wall into the off position. Ven stumbles back a bit at my sudden movement but doesn’t try to correct my action. The water pressure slows to barely a trickle without the hot water being used. Good grief, was she trying to bathe me or cook me?

I spin the ‘Cold’ dial on full blast and let out a sigh of relief as the ice water mixes with the lingering molten water and overpowers it. Off to the side of the tub, Ven gives me a curious look and tilts her head.

Cute.

She doesn’t move again until the water is at my chest level, letting me relax comfortably with my back against the wall of the tub. I almost want to go back to sleep, but the cold water does its work and I’m wide awake once more.

That doesn’t stop my eyes from stinging, though.

Ven doesn’t undress herself or get into the tub with me. She opts to sit next to the tub and reaches in to wash me. I lean forward when she motions for me to and duck under the water when she wants to rinse me off, but our exchanges are all wordless. It’s kind of a cool thing between us, being able to communicate so effortlessly without actual verbal speech. One thing that catches my attention are her ears. As she works, her ears flick separately from each other in an expert way that I don’t think I could recreate.

What is she doing?

There’s nothing around for her to listen to besides the sound of water being displaced. But her ears are flicking up and down in a way that tells me she’s not listening to anything in particular. She’s just moving them for the sake of the motion.

“Mm?” she mumbles inquisitively as she catches me watching her ears. I look between her eyes and her ears, trying to hint her into my confusion. She looks up and notices that her ears are still flopping around wildly.

A knowing smile reaches her lips and she actually chuckles.

“Talking!” she tells me. I look up again and watch as she folds one ear down while holding the other at attention. She then moves them side to side like they’re in sync. It’s kind of like she’s making them do jumping jacks.

But I’m still confused as to why.

“Talking?” I ask. She nods and points to me.

“Winter,” she states. Her ears go through a practiced series of movements. “Ven!” she points to herself and the ears flick in an entirely different pattern.

“You...is that like a language?”

She nods and her ears go wild again.

“What did they say?”

“They say you clean!” she beams down at me from my position in the tub. Woah, apparently she’s been running through a conversation with herself the whole time she’s been washing me and I’ve been deaf to the meaning. My hearing is useless in the face of this new form of ear-based sign language.

I can’t even feel the exhaustion plaguing my body.

I’m intrigued!

Is this something I can learn? Oh, I can only IMAGINE how useful a silent language would be around here. Hell, it could be vital in organizing a plan to get out of here without Boss or his goons catching on!

“Who else knows?” I ask.

“Just Ven,” she answers with a shrug.

Oh. Well, maybe...we could learn.

“Can you...teach me?” I ask shyly. The exact source of the language and how sensitive it is to Ven are mysteries to me. I don’t want to accidentally offend her for asking her to share something she might see as super personal.

She blinks at me and tilts her head the other way, her chin partially squishing into her neck.

Still cute.

“You...learn? Ven teach?” she asks, the words seeming to tingle her lips. I nod slowly to her, maintaining eye contact so that she knows that I’m serious.

Her ears flick even faster as she has an internal debate with herself. My attention remains locked on those two dancing bits of skin on her head, my mind trying to figure out what she might be saying to herself.

She finally lets her ears go still and she returns her focus to me.

“Ven tries. Hard, though. Time short,” she answers me in her broken accent. I think I get the meaning of her words, though. It can’t be an easy language to learn if we have limited communication already. And with how little time we’re around each other, it might take a long time before I’m able to learn anything from her.

But after today, the season’s over. Maybe I’ll get some more free time? That is, of course, unless they decide to just sell my body to whoever is okay with fucking a kit for money.

A shiver runs down my body again at the thought of being forced into the bedsheets.

“How do I say Ven?” I ask as I start to drain the water from the tub. Ven responds by folding her left ear down and flicking her right ear three times. I repeat the motion back to her and she grows a wide smile, clapping her pawpads together in glee.

We share a moment of bliss together as we both work to get me dried off.

The fact that I’m naked around her still doesn’t bother me, but I catch her shooting glances towards my chest every so often. I don’t mind the looks; the other vixens all had their shares of checking my scars out. In my mind, they were all just checking to make sure I was okay. I know my first impression on them might have left them thinking that I was an emotionally unstable basket case who can’t handle being around more than a few mammals at a time thanks to my previous trauma.

...That might not be that far from the truth, honestly.

But I think that part of me is getting better over time.

I hadn’t wedged myself anywhere since the fridge incident, and that one wasn’t even in fear!

Soon enough, I’m dried off and Ven is leading me back out of the bathroom. The smell of sex hits me like a train as we enter the work area. Geez, had I really gone so noseblind to this stench? The lack of windows in this place is definitely a curse.

Ven flinches a bit but tries her hardest to show me that she isn’t phased.

The kindly vixen sits me down on the bed and motions for me to get back under the blankets. My ears flick out the motions for her name again and she spares me another giggle. She walks over to the wall, my eyes following her every motion.

Since when have I been so curious about what lies under a vixen’s dress?

With every other vixen, I didn’t really feel much attraction to them. They are all beautiful, but at the same time, I feel like I’m doing something horrible by seeing them naked. It’s like I hate myself for even being around them.

But with Ven, it’s different. All those thoughts about her hating me are long gone. She’s the same sweet fox that I met in the vixen room and she’s done nothing but put my well-being first. What is this tingling warmth inside my belly?

For once, I’m actually looking forward to her taking her shirt off. Not because I necessarily want to see her naked, but because I know how comfy she would feel to hug without her shirt. If I’m naked and she’s naked, our warmth together would be like…

Gosh...is this what a crush feels like?

I like to think so. Maybe something in me can still be stirred. Maybe some of my positive emotions can still be triggered.

A tingle runs through me and I can’t help but squirm under the covers.

The lights in the room flick off suddenly and I’m plunged into darkness.

“Wha?” I ask in confusion. I hadn’t asked her to do that. I hadn’t turned the lights off in a while now. And I was kinda looking forward to seeing her. Her body fascinates me.

“...Lights off?” Ven mumbles from her place in the dark.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to do that. I’ve been leaving them on recently,” I tell her. Her voice mumbles something but it’s overpowered by the sounds of her ears flicking like mad.

“Please?” she finally asks. A bolt of pain runs through my chest at how vulnerable she sounds. It didn’t even occur to me that she would have her own reasons to do this in the dark. For some reason, she doesn’t want to be seen without her dress-shirt.

You know what? That’s fine. I had the same emotions running through me the first few times. The only reason I got over it was because I was exposed to a lot of constant nudity.

I didn’t even bother double checking Ash’s notebook for details on Ven.

She’s a first-timer and I’ve known since my first full read-through of the notebook.

Ash probably never even got to meet her.

How weird is that? Between a twelve year old and a...maybe sixteen-seventeen year old, the kit is the sexpert. What a fucked up world I’m forced to live in. But at least I get to live in it with mammals such as Ven and the rest of the vixens.

They might be several pawfuls to handle, but they’re good friends.

“Sure, you can keep them off. I don’t mind,” I answer. Ven lets out a happy yip and proceeds to make her way to the bed, though slowly as to not trip over anything. The sound of fabric being removed and folded catches my ears and my face burns bright red.

She’s taking her shirt off. Even in the dark, I try my hardest to see what she looks like.

To my disappointment, all I can see is the dark outline of her roundish body. But just the knowledge of her being nude is enough to stir me awake again. I hide under the covers, already starting to feel overwhelmed. But this time, it’s in a good way.

Ven’s weight falls onto the bed but doesn’t move closer to me right away. She just sits there for a few moments and I think she might be hesitating. This is her first time, after all. I remember how nervous I was about mine.

I’ll go slow with her.

I pull the covers back down and look in the direction of her breathing. A faint tremble can be felt vibrating the mattress even from this distance. Oh no, she’s shaking.

Without a moment’s thought, I sit up and reach forward, wrapping my arms around the nervous vixen and pulling her down the bed next to me. A small bark escapes her lips but she doesn’t pull away.

She might have expected me to pull her on top of me, but I don’t. Instead, I simply lay her down right next to me and cover her with my blankets so that we’re sharing them. The trembling stops over the next few minutes and I’m content to just cuddle up next to her with my arms lassoed around her. As I remember, she’s very soft and warm to hold. My muzzle can’t stop itself but burying into her skin and letting out a warm huff.

She’s like a den all by herself. She’s safe, warm and dark. I wish I could just hide in her forever.

Plus, she smells nice.

She taps me on the head after a while and I realize that I’d actually gotten so comfy in her skin that I’d fallen asleep. I am quick to remove myself, but can’t stop the yawn that escapes me. She’s warmer now than she was before. I wonder if that’s my fault.

I sit up a little bit, but get pulled right back down to her. A pair of lips is pressed to mine and I melt instantly. This isn’t the kiss of understanding between victims like Pepper had planted on me. No, this is a warm kiss full of appreciation and...something deeper that I don’t recognize.

Either way, I love it.

I kiss her back with equal force and cling to her body again. She rolls us back over to the middle of the bed so that she’s laying on me. She’s admittedly a good bit heavier than the rest of the vixens I’ve been with, but I don’t care. I’m not being crushed and the weight instead seems more like a comfortable squishing.

Another kiss.

But instead of moving forward, she pauses for a moment and fumbles with something she had placed on the side of the bed. The darkness of the room around us keeps the item’s identity a secret until I feel her paw fumbling around near my head. Once she finds my ear, I feel something smooth but firm being pushed into it.

This is...no, it can’t be. How would she have access to one of these?

But as the music starts flowing into my head, I can’t deny that she somehow brought along a CD player. And the song she happened to start playing is...the same one she hummed to me back in the vixen room to pull me down from my panic attack.

My mom’s song.

My ears flick out the spelling of Ven’s name in the dark. I can’t see what she signs back, but I only assume that she’s returning the affection.

My session with Ven goes as quickly as I would have hoped.

But it wasn’t about the sex. The sex was just the thing going on in the background of our minds.

What we really shared was a moment of serenity between two foxes.

My father used to describe feeling something very similar during one of his early meetings with my mom.

For a fox, we only get one of these moments in a lifetime.

It’s like a sealing of two souls together.

A binding.

As I look into the darkness where I know Ven is located, I feel something pulsing in me that I thought would have been dead forever.

After only spending a very short amount of time around her, I know.

I love her.

I want to be her mate.

She’s the one I want to be with for life.

And with this joyous revelation shared between us, our session concludes alongside the CD we both were listening to.

The season is over.

But the struggles will undoubtedly continue.

Except now, I’ll have someone to share them with.

Before we go to sleep, Ven switches out the CD with another one she had brought along with her and we drift off together to the sounds of strings.


	15. Voice

I sleep longer and better than I have in weeks. My mind is mercifully silent for the hours that I’m able to rest, a relieving sign of comfort I thought would be impossible in such a place. It feels like my entire mind is being rocked gently by a soft warmth that breathes as I do. Weeks worth of body aches, pulled muscles and a bruised pelvis start to melt away from me, at least for as long as I’m asleep. For a little while, I can swear that I’m not in an underground fur farm and I didn’t just spend two weeks having sex with practical strangers.

But all good things have to come to an end sometime.

And at least this time, I awake with a strange sense of anticipation. For once, I have something to look forward to by waking up.

As I slowly fade back into reality, the first thing that catches my rebooting attention is the soft sound of a familiar lullaby being whispered into my ears. It’s the most peaceful way I’ve been allowed to wake up since I was taken.

Instead of Tess bursting in to tell me who is coming in next, it seems we’re being left alone for a little while longer than normal. Maybe there are just more important things to do now that the season is over. She probably has to rush around and work on getting some other poor mammals laid against their will.

I might not like where I am, but I don’t envy Tess at all. At least being a victim means I have a lot less guilt than if I was actively assisting the gang.

Not that I think she’s doing it because she wants to...I’m fully aware that she’s just another captive.

A sweet smell flows up my nose and fills my senses. I love this smell and I’ve recently figured out that I love the source of it.

My eyes blink open and the first thing I am able to see is the only mammal I want to see.

Ven.

She’s awake already and has been softly running her claws through my coat for a decent chunk of time. What time did she wake up? I hope I didn't keep her awake or anything. She needs sleep too; she’s been through something pretty life-changing and she is definitely more affected than she is allowing me to know.

I can barely see her through the skin my face is mashed into. It’s not even a strange feeling anymore; the warmth of Ven’s body is already the closest thing to safety I can think of. Similar to a den or a pillow but alive and breathing. Just having someone close to me in a way that I know they won’t hurt me is amazing.

I huff up at her once my nose is far enough out of her to look towards her face. She finally notices that I’m awake and gives me the sweetest smile. But she doesn’t stop singing.

It’s strange...her normal way of speaking is broken and her understanding of the language seems to be a bit limited. But when she’s singing, all the words match and she uses them like an expert. Maybe it just comes with practice?

I listen to her sing my mom’s song for a while. It might be a long time before I’m able to relax like this again, so I treasure every moment.

She leans down and nudges me, making me aware that I had been nodding off again. I can’t help it! Her voice just tingles my ears so pleasantly that I can’t stop my brain from winding down.

I notice that she has stopped singing and is looking down at me expectantly. The only thing I can respond to her with is a confused head-tilt. The curvy vixen rolls her eyes and offers me a playful grin.

Again, she opens her mouth to sing, but holds her breath instead and then looks down to me.

Oh, does she want me to continue?

I mean...I could try, but I’ve only ever really sang to myself in the past. The fear of choking up and making her laugh tugs at me, though it’s pretty much the tamest of the negative emotions I’ve felt lately. It sure beats the itching stress.

It takes a few moments for me to gather my courage to appease her wish. She might be my favorite mammal in the world right now, but we still don’t know each other and me singing would be like willingly baring the soul I have been guarding so adamantly.

What if she doesn’t like it?

What if she gives me a look of disgust and walks out?

I don’t think I could take losing her so immediately.

But she just keeps looking at me patiently, giving me the time to prepare but not giving me the option to say no. After what I had put her through prior to our slumber, I can’t say she doesn’t deserve this…

Okay.

If she wants for me to look and sound silly, then that’s what she’s going to get.

My lungs burn with the air that I suck in, my body desperately trying to keep it contained so that I don’t make the noise that I know might ruin me in her mind for good.

She sees that I’m about to comply, so she begins again from the point in the song where she had stopped. With her leading me in, it’s easier to find the courage to let my voice be heard.

The first few words I sing with her are scratchy and out of tune, a product of having just woken up. The heat rushes to my face before I can stop it.

She lets out a snort of amusement as I clear my throat. Oh crap, she already thinks I’m pathetic…

The sound of her laughter drains me of my courage to continue. I try to turn away from her to hide my face until she’s taken away just like all the others, but she doesn’t let me get far.

“No! No! Winter was cute! Please, please try!” she urges against my attempts to hide away from her. I peer one eye up and see her giving me a soft, apologetic smile. The way she looks at me draws a feeling of warmth and comfort from my tired chest.

After clearing my throat a few more times, I begin again and follow along with her words. This time, my voice is much closer to what I’m used to hearing come out of me. I like to think it’s soft and mellow, since I don’t speak that much to begin with.

I’ve heard this song a thousand times before.

But up until now, I don’t think I’ve actually ever been the one singing it. It’s a strange feeling, hearing my voice say the words that only a mother should say to her kit.

As the tune goes on and we sing with each other, I get a little braver and raise my voice to match hers. Then I even manage to sing louder than Ven, to the point that I don’t realize when she stops singing with him. I carry the song on my own, with the vixen above me watching me intently, a look on her face that I can’t place.

Though I can hardly focus on her.

My mind is too busy swimming in feelings of pain and longing. Every word I sing brings back a different memory of my mother tucking me into bed. Each note reminds me that someone out there still loves me, even though we might as well exist in different realities at this point.

I miss my family.

I miss my friends.

I miss the sunshine and the moonlight.

I miss going to school.

I miss just being able to listen to music and stare out of the window during my free time. It wasn’t productive, but it did so much to let me unwind.

The simple joy of being able to waste my own hours is gone. I waste time, but it’s always their time that I’m wasting.

Take that, you evil bastards.

I waste your time.

Ven’s paw startles me out of my trance as she wipes away some moisture that had somehow found its way down my face. I stop singing and look up at her.

Her head is tilted down at me, the bottom of her chin squishing into her neck slightly. In her eyes, I can see a flare of worry aimed directly at me.

Woah, when did I start crying? I didn’t even notice…

“You…” she starts, but has to stop to think about her words. My ears lay flat in worry, afraid she might tear apart how awful my voice sounds or something like that.

“Winter sing beautiful.”

I can only stare up at her in confusion. My voice is something I had ever really let out in private. It was never that impressive to me, especially if I heard it in a recording. This is probably the first time I’ve ever sang in front of someone. I expected her to laugh…

“No, I don’t…” is what comes out of my mouth. Between my insecurity and inability to take a compliment with grace, I think I’m just trying to get her to explain herself a bit.

Or I just want to hear it again.

“Yes, you do!” comes a voice sounding very much not like the voice of the shapely vixen wrapped around me. My heart experiences an unnecessary jolt and my first instinct is to bury my face into Ven’s chest.

It suddenly hits me that she’s still naked, but...I can see her. Didn’t we go to sleep with the lights off? Who turned them back on? They’ve been on since I woke up!

“Mm!” Ven squeaks as I squeeze her tightly. A light but apathetic chuckle meets my ears and the owner of the voice becomes more evident to me.

I pull my nose out of the vixen’s squishy skin and turn my head just enough to confirm that Tess is indeed the one who is watching us from the doorway.

She has a small smile on her muzzle that betrays the tired, sleepless look in her eyes. She must have been running around like crazy doing whatever needs to be done around here.

I don’t mind, it gave me some more time with Ven. But now that the wolf is here, then that means...Ven has to go back to her room now.

The realization alone brings back the itch I had all but forgotten about. Another friend is being taken away, but this one hurts more than the others. Ven is more than just my friend. I think I love her, even if I’m not really sure what that is supposed to mean. She connected with me in a way that none of the others had over these past couple weeks.

And I just sang for her…

Now she’s being removed from my room, and I won’t see her until who knows when. What if I don’t see her until our kit is already born…?

I’m...going to be a father…

And I won’t ever be able to see my kits…

My sudden trembling catches the attention of the two females, who spring up to try to shake me out of my spiral. The itching is back in full force, despite how tightly I’m holding the very vixen who seemed to make it go away.

There’s some shouting that I can’t hear over the loud ringing in my ears. My whole world is dark and smells like Ven, but the itch continues.

A few minutes feels like a year. Finally, I feel a tiny prick in my neck and the familiar sensation of dizzy relief flows through my panicking body. It relaxes one limb at a time until I’m brought back to reality. The itching might have stopped, but the trembling continues.

I don’t want to lose Ven.

I love Ven.

Please don’t take Ven away from me...not her.

Wasn’t my family and freedom enough…?

“Winter?” Tess finally breaks through to me as she tilts my head out of Ven’s skin so that I’m looking at her. “Bud, what’s wrong? Do you feel sick?”

Her eyes are wide and worried.

I took the smile from her face just by being myself.

I suck.

Why can’t I stop hurting them?

“Bud!” she repeats, this time her voice louder. She gives me a gentle shake. My eyes finally focus on her and I do what I can to force the moisture out of them. I don’t want to cry again.

“...Please...don’t take her away…” I struggle to say to her, my voice dangerously close to breaking. Tess looks me up and down, trying to figure out what I’m talking about. She looks past my face to see what Ven is trying to convey to her. Whatever Ven does seems to give her enough of a hint to figure it out.

Her eyes soften as she examines my reaction. She’s taken dozens of vixens out of my room, and seems to realize that something is different this time.

“You want Ven to stay?” she asks softly. I nod my head immediately and try to blink the encroaching tears from my eyes. She looks down at the carpet while she thinks, but doesn’t let me go. Maybe she’s afraid that if she does, I might start convulsing or panicking again.

I hate that she wouldn’t be wrong for thinking so.

I can hear Ven compressing the mattress springs under her as she scoots closer to us. Just being a tiny bit nearer to her brings so much comfort.

“You…” Tess starts, but cuts herself off and tries to regather her thoughts. A few seconds later, she begins again.

“You still need a sell. And if what I just heard coming out of you is evidence of anything, then I think I know what you can do in your off-season.”

I open my mouth to speak, but she cuts me off.

“We’re out of time and you need to polish that talent of yours so we can use it to keep them from selling your body to any pervert who likes kits. Now, you can sing, but we need you to be able to perform. This means singing, dancing, learning how to properly breathe while moving around and having professional control over your voice. Do you understand?”

My eyes widen a bit at how urgent she suddenly is. It’s almost like she had resigned to herself that I would likely just have to deal with being for sale until next mating season, and now that she sees a glimmer of hope, she’s firing on all cylinders to get me ready.

“Y...yeah…” I mumble up at her.

“I can let Ven stay here while she helps you learn to control your voice. Ven, you teach him what you know and have him singing as beautifully as you do as soon as possible, okay? They’re going to start putting mammals up for sale any day now and we need to show them what he can do before then. Got it?” she demands.

Ven must be nodding behind me, because Tess returns the nod and stands up. As soon as the wolf lets go of my body, I feel a second pair of arms encircling me. These ones bring much more time comfort.

It’s not that I don’t like Tess.

But every time she’s around, I’m stressing or in a full blown panic attack. My body just doesn’t react well when she’s around and it’s learning to put up defenses at the sound of her voice or even just her paw steps.

“Get to work, you two! I have to go make some arrangements with the band to make sure they know what song Winter is going to sing to,” Tess calls as she glides through the doorway as if she’s skating. Before she can shut the door behind her, Ven calls out.

“What song?”

Tess backtracks and peeks back through the door at them, a look of exasperated concentration on her face.

“Ahh...pfft...how about Saturday Nights? Do you have that one?” Tess asks. Ven thinks for a moment but nods.

“Great! I know Sully is a fan of Woolton John so that should score some extra points with him. Gives Winter a chance to show some spunk. Shit, we need to get him something to wear, too...ugh! Should have paired you up at the beginning of the season!” Tess complains as she closes the door behind her and stomps down the hall with purpose.

The brightly lit room is silent for the next two minutes as Ven and I try to process what had just been decided.

Apparently Ven is going to have to teach me how to sing and perform, and I’m going to have to go on stage in front of the same pig who sold my father’s skin just to impress him into not selling my body for sex with strangers.

And we have little time to get this all done…

No pressure.

Ven squeezes me with her naked body to see if I’m okay.

No pressure.

I try to say something but I choke on the air in my lungs.

No fucking pressure.

My whole body goes limp in Ven’s arms as the weight of my future slams down on top of me. I’m going to be a performer? I just sang for someone else for the first time in my life, and now I’m going to have to sing in front of an audience.

Ven is saying something, but her voice is muffled by my ears being pressed so tightly against my head.

Can’t I just learn to draw better? Or juggle? Or something else that wouldn’t involve me baring my soul on stage for all to see?

What if I can’t sing once I’m on stage? I can already imagine a line of much larger, older mammals lining up and licking their lips at me, just waiting for me to fail so they can take me.

I don’t want this.

But I need this.

The alternative is unimaginable.

“Tess get CD. Then we sing,” Ven says down to me. I let out a long breath to calm my racing heart. The poor organ has been through too much already. Maybe it’ll just stop and allow me to escape this place for good without having to make that decision myself.

Ven places a paw on my chest and moves it up and down as I inhale and exhale. By making me pay attention to the motion of her paw, she’s tricking my body into slowing its breathing.

Soon, we’re just sitting there in the empty room that’s the closest thing I have to a home right now.

“First, learn to breathe. Go hhhhhhhh and aaaaaaaahh. Hhhhhhhhhh and aaaaaaaahhh,” she instructs me.

The next few minutes are just her breathing with me to wake me up and get me used to the motion. It’s a combination of the breathing exercise and her presence that finally calms me down completely.

A little while later, Tess returns with a small plastic square in her paw. She gives it to Ven, gives both of us another nod and turns tail to go back to what she’s doing. She mumbles so loudly to herself as she moves that I can hear her going until she’s a good way down the hall.

Ven swaps the discs in her music player and gets up to go check on something in the kitchen. I blush brightly as I notice how...exposed her body still is. I get a full eyeful of her walking away before I can turn my head and avert my gaze.

I’d never seen a body like hers before.

And out of respect for her, I close my eyes and bundle her clothes in a little pile for when she gets back from the kitchen.

While I listen to her moving around and opening the fridge, I notice that she’s walking with a bit of a limp for some reason.

She wasn’t before…

I don’t know what it is, but something inside me is trying to be proud of this little detail. Maybe it’s because of something I heard from a few of the cruder kits in school.

She better not be hurt. 

I keep my face in the pillow as she returns. There’s a few moments of silence before I hear the pile of clothes hastily being grabbed and adorned. She puts off a bit more heat as she does this, warming up the room to an almost uncomfortable temperature.

Luckily, my recent dose of peace holds the itching at bay.

Ven clears her throat.

I slowly peak my head up from the pillow and look over at her. She’s dressed in the same clothes she walked into the room with now, her only new accessory being a flustered and awkward expression.

“Thank...uhm...Winter drink water!” she suddenly blurts, holding up the empty water bottles I had her to refill.

My ear flicks at her.

“No, serious!” she pouts. “Winter drink much water! Important for voice! Also...be quiet when not singing!” 

I look between her and the water bottles,

Okay, so drink lots of water. It’ll have to be all faucet water, though. Hopefully the metal in the tap doesn’t harm my throat more than help.

A nod.

“And, uhm...we listen to song, stick in mind. Remember words!”

Memorize the song I’m going to be singing.

Got it.

It’s obvious that Ven has never had to teach someone something before. She doesn’t know where to start and is practically having her own little mini-panic attack as she tries to form the sentences with her limited grasp on the language.

In order to calm her down, I sit up and slide myself off the bed to get some water like she was telling me to. I take one of the bottles she had placed on the comforter and walk into the bathroom to fill it with some water.

She watches me as I oblige her.

Maybe I was thirsty anyway, because I chug down a couple bottles worth in front of her. Without another word, I return to my bed with the bottle topped off for me to sip on as she teaches me.

Ven gives me a thankful smile and moves to her CD player, the next item on her list.

The curvy vixen rejoins me on the bed in a flash, her sudden closeness reminding me just how intimate we had recently been. If she notices how flustered I am, she doesn’t show it. To her, the only thing on her mind now is to help me find a way off of the list of available playthings.

And for that, I love her even more.

She slides an earbud into my ear, the sudden chill from the cold object sending a pleasant shiver down my spine.

This time, she lets me use both buds, probably so I can hear the words more accurately. What are they going to make me sing?

The CD player spins up in her paws and she clicks a few of the buttons to skip to the song she wants me to listen to.

This song might determine my future.

I hope it’s something good.

The first thing that blasts into my sensitive ears is what sounds like someone sliding their paw down all the notes on a piano. The volume is too high! I make a pained face and reach up to tug the buds from my ears, but Ven must have caught onto what is upsetting me.

The sound decreases to a more reasonable level in seconds. A sigh of relief escapes me as my brain is allowed to resume normal functionality again.

She gives me an apologetically sweet smile that I can’t help swoon over just a bit. But the thing that distracts me is the familiar nature of the song playing on my head.

I know this song.

This is a classic!

According to my parents, at least. I’ve heard it plenty of times just because I happened to be in a vehicle with a radio while one of them was driving me somewhere. It’s one of those songs I just lived with as a kid. I assumed it was a song everybody knew and listened to because at that point, I didn’t understand how different the lives are among all the mammals I saw every day.

This song was just one of those constants that never went away. And here it is, popping up once against to visit like it’s an old friend wanting to check up and see how I’m doing.

I bop along to the song as it plays, trying to imagine how my voice would sound trying to sing some of the words. I’ll definitely need to sound energetic and almost aggressive. It’s not like anything I’ve sung to myself before.

I’ll have to take on a whole new exterior to pull off a song like this, considering it’ll be me singing and dancing. I have to perform, not just show up and sing.

They can’t sell just singing.

If I’m going to be something that people would come to see, I’ll have to become something I know I’m not:

Flamboyant.

I can already feel my body wanting to shrink away from the reality that I might have to be a performer until the day I die.

A part of me strongly prefers the latter option.

The song ends and everything goes quiet. Ven clicks off the CD player and gives me an expectant look.

“Winter like?”

I stare at her for a few seconds longer than necessary just because I want to.

“Uh...yeah. I know this song.”

“Really? Good!” she barks happily, knowing that getting me to memorize the song just got a lot easier for her.

“My dad liked this song a lot,” I mumble. Her happy barking halts in an instant. Her eyes fill with sadness as seemingly prepares herself to calm me down again.

But this time...I don’t cry.

I don’t even really get sad.

It just...is. My dad liked a song, played it around me a lot and now that’s going to be helping my situation.

Thanks, dad.

I love you.

Got work to do, now.

I can’t waste anymore time letting my despair take me over.

“Ven…” I say softly. Her ears perk up and she looks at me curiously.

“Keep playing it, please.”

The next few hours are spent just listening to the song over and over, mouthing to the words to make sure I know what they are. Most of them are what I remembered, but I find that there’s a few lines I have been getting wrong all my life. Those are quickly scrubbed clean from my mind to make room for the actual lyrics.

At some point, Ven removes one of the buds from my ears while I’m taking another drink of water.

“Now...you try,” she orders gently.

Wow.

I never expected the act of singing a classic song like this would be such a test for me. My throat dries up so I chug some more water.

The water just seems to make it even worse.

“Is okay. Ven sing too,” she tells me as she places a paw on my arm. She’s warm and gentle, just like I know her to be.

So we’ll sing this together for now? That’s pretty doable. I can manage that.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Yeah…” I mumble nervously. I’m not really ready, but we need to get started. Who knows when they might drag me away to some room to get violated by some monster in mammal’s clothing…

The piano starts again, giving me only a moment to take a breath. This causes me to choke and stutter for the first few words, which Ven hits perfectly. Her singing voice comes back in force, though this time sounding much bolder and snappier. She moves on as I struggle to catch up. I pick the next line to begin and manage to tag along with her.

The first word is off-pitch, but my ears go to work figuring out where I am versus where I need to be. Two words later, I’m matching Ven’s voice in pitch, volume and attitude.

The sounds that are coming out of me are completely alien. And by alien, I mean new to me. Even Ven opens her eyes to give me a surprised look as I follow along with the song playing in my ear. Like...it sounds really cool. It’s just not what I’m used to sounding like.

My lullaby voice is mostly what I imagine my voice would always sound like. Soft and melodic, but maybe a bit too high.

Now that I’m actively trying to make my voice sound more raspy and aggressive, I feel like an entirely different fox.

It actually startles me into skipping a breath and swallowing some spit down the wrong pipe. Ven has to stop the song to allow me to cough and choke until my lungs are clear.

We sit there in silence for a few moments, just looking at each other. Her fur is looking fluffier for some reason, almost like she got a shiver.

“Wow.”

I clear my throat one last time and chuckle along with her.

“Yeah…”

“Winter sound good.”

It’s so difficult for me to acknowledge her saying this without trying to pass it off as a fluke or change the subject. Compliments were only ever things I got from close loved ones.

I just have to settle with a thankful nod as I go to chug some more water.

“One thing. Try stand, help get air better,” she instructs me. I move off the bed without fuss and do what she’s telling me to.

“Okay, also breathe. Always breathe.”

I repeat the breathing pattern she had me doing earlier.

“Move face and, ah...em...eem...emooo...ugh. Winter feel feelings while singing!” she finally manages to convey, though she finishes with a fierce pout.

“Emote?” I offer.

“Yes!” she cheers and leans forward, giving me a small kiss on my head.

Weird...why does that tiny kiss feel so personal? We’ve already had sex, but that little kiss is so much more meaningful. It brings forth a sensation of floating that I don’t think I’ve experienced since, well...Fru Fru.

And just like that, the happy feeling is gone.

I wonder how she’s doing right now...she’s only a couple districts away, yet she might as well be on the other end of the universe.

She probably thinks I’m dead.

She lost her friend and I can’t be there to help her through it. It feels like I’m abandoning her, in a way.

Did she actually like me?

She teased me all the time like she did, but...I wish I could have known the truth. Is me being with Ven cheating? Or the other two dozen vixens?

Fru Fru will likely never see me again. She’ll grow up, make new friends, finish school, and probably get married to someone her own size. Then she’ll have some little shrew kits and maybe run her father’s business one day. And by that time, I’ll probably just be a coat keeping some rich asshole warm.

...I can’t keep doing this to myself. Every time I start feeling good about something, I immediately think of how much my life sucks right now and drag myself back down.

How do other mammals do it?

They just keep being happy even when they’re going through tough times. If only I knew the secret to blocking out the negative thoughts.

I’d probably have a much easier time staying sane and alive in this place.

I need to let myself be happy.

Even if only for moments at a time.

I lean forward and kiss Ven on her cheek to return the affection. She blinks down at me in surprise but offers the same warm smile I’ve come to know.

We smell like each other.

I like that.

“Okay, ready?” she asks again.

I stand up straight and remember what she’s been telling me to try.

Emote.

Breathe.

I’d drink water if the bottle wasn’t empty again.

I’m going to end up having to piss soooo bad.

She slides closer to me so we can each share one of the buds again. A few clicks and the song begins. This time, I am ready for the music and begin with her as soon as the piano finishes opening the song.

With my body not scrunched up like before, and with more oxygen in my blood from the breathing pattern, I find it much easier to find my notes and stick to them. Ven’s eyes are glued to me.

She wants me to emote.

So I do.

Instead of standing there and reciting the lyrics, I try to feel the song. I’m in the club and I’m going to go wild and live my life, even if I end up getting in a fight!

My limbs loosen as I start to bop up and down with the music. I close my eyes so I can focus on what emotions I want to feel, which has the unexpected effect of putting me into a trance where I stand.

The sounds of breaking glass and rowdy customers are almost audible in my head. I’m walking through the shady alleys in town, dodging other mammals who are playfully beating the shit out of each other.

The mental images passing through my mind cause a jolt of energy to shoot through my body. I can feel myself dancing around the room now, if the stylish flailing can be called that.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

But it feels right.

I don’t even notice the door click open once more and I continue for the rest of the song. By the time the music stops, I’m out of breath and feeling a lot more lively than I have in weeks.

My eyes creak open as I take in the scene around me. Ven is holding her paws in front of her face and grinning like mad.

Just behind me, Tess is leaning against the doorway with a bundle of stiff black costume clothes in her arms.

The two give me a round of applause, which only horrifies me. I had just made an idiot of myself in front of two females!

One of which I really like!

…

Tess leans down and grabs me just before the back half of me can disappear into the darkness and safety of the bathroom.

So close…

“Nah, none of that. You were great! Just gotta work on those moves and getting the emotion into the right places. Also gotta work on your physical appearance, but that’s what these are for,” Tess chuckles as she passes me a black bundle.

I look down at the texture of the material, which immediately raises some red flags.

“Tess, this isn’t-?”

“No, it’s not real hide. Just textured to look like it. For this song, we gotta have you looking like an old day greaser,” she explains.

“Oh...uh, okay. Why?” I ask.

“You tell me, bud. I just saw you stomping around and doing the fake finger snap while you were in the zone a few m-HEY!” she barks as she again has to pull me back from hiding in the bathroom. Ven giggles all the while, finding my embarrassment truly charming, apparently.

“Okay! Just let me down...and stop bringing it up,” I plead. Tess smirks down at me, the sense of urgency in her eyes relaxing a bit at my antics. Maybe me being silly is what they both need right now. Is that what needs to happen?

If it means cheering them up, I’ll certainly try. It’s better than constantly making their lives worse.

I’ll give it a shot from now on.

Might even help me learn how to put on a happy face even if I’m not feeling good. That’ll probably be important if I’m to go up on stage and put on a show.

My eyes turn down to the strange-smelling bundle in my arms. I sniff at them for longer than necessary, waiting for one of them to call me out first.

Surprisingly, it’s Ven who reacts first.

“Winter! Try on!” she laughs and bops me in the back of the head. Tess smiles even more at the display.

Apparently it’s working.

“Okay, mom!” I try to joke.

Both of them flinch.

I flinch.

That hurt all of us a little inside for different reasons. I stutter to apologize for the slip of the tongue, but it dies in my throat and I silently retreat into the bathroom to change my clothes.

Nudity is something I’ve gotten a lot more used to lately, but I definitely need a moment to gather myself after that. It takes all my willpower to keep myself from picturing what my mom and sister must be doing right now.

Their faces haunt my mind like a bad nightmare. But it’s one I haven’t been able to wake up from yet.

I’m doing it again.

This has to stop. Me freaking out and causing a scene is getting old for me, so I can’t even imagine how fed up they must be.

Just have to stay calm and put these clothes on. It would be a lot easier if they didn’t stink so bad and crinkle when they moved. How long have these just been sitting around? They’re so stiff I can barely move in them!

And they make a lot of noise whenever I move anything. She doesn’t expect me to be able to dance or breathe in these, right?

The sounds of their hushed conversation can be heard through the door, thanks to my overly sensitive ears. I’d rather not hear what they have to say about me, so I keep my ears lowered against my head.

Once the rest of the clothes are on, I look at myself in the mirror. Just like the first time I glanced at myself in it, I don’t recognize the fox staring back at me. It’s not just the clothes, either. They’re gaudy and don’t suit me at all.

I just look...older?

My eyes are still tired and my fur is a bit unkempt but there’s a new kind of air surrounding me. It’s like I’m looking at someone who is far more experienced than they should be. It almost scares me when I lift my paw to my face and the fox in the mirror follows my motion.

Who is this?

Who am I?

Apparently, this is who Winter Alabaster is.

...I miss being Adam.

A soft knock at the bathroom door makes both of my ears flick to it.

“Hey, bud, how you doin’ in there? You know we’re not mad at you or anything, right?” comes the voice of Tess through the cheap wood that separates us. I look away from the mirror and break the funk I had been stuck in.

“Uh, yeah...just finishing putting this on,” I say back to her. My ears can pick up the faint sounds of her paws snagging bits of the carpet as she retreats back to her doorway.

Walking to the bathroom door causes a ruckus from my stiff clothing. I’ve only taken two steps and I already can’t stand these.

With a breath to calm myself, I exit the bathroom and reveal myself to the two females occupying my room. Tess is examining me from the doorway and Ven tilts her head oddly from her place on my bed.

There’s nothing I can think to do but stand there awkwardly and let them soak me in with their eyes. I start to suspect that they’re trying not to laugh at me. And I wouldn’t blame them.

These clothes don’t work for me…at all.

Tess tilts her head too, trying to work over some sort of mental image. Her lips purse in concentration and she folds her arms, letting out a few mumbles to herself as she thinks.

“Maybe with some shades? No, too much of a contrast with the white…maybe some…? No...ugh, that wouldn’t work…” she says to herself under her breath. Over on the bed, Ven looks slightly put-off by my appearance. A small whine escapes her throat before she can stop herself.

“...No?” I ask out loud to anybody who will answer.

“What do you think?” Tess inquires genuinely.

“I hate them. Can’t move and they squeak in my ear and they stink. Can I take them off now?” I beg, making sure to give her my widest, most shimmering eyes. The tall wolf chews on her lip and sighs, but nods.

The jacket goes flying as soon as I manage to bend it enough to slide out of. My chest catches the attention of the two in the brief moment it’s visible before I close the bathroom door behind me.

Putting my other clothes back on makes me realize just how comfy they are. They might be really big on me, but that just means my body can breathe.

I exit the bathroom again and pass the messy lump of rejected clothing back to Tess. She gives me another brief look before something seems to click inside her head.

“Bud, I have another idea. But you might not like it. I’m going to bring them over, and I want you to try them on, but if you don’t like them, we can keep trying, okay?”

“Okay?” I reply, not sure why she’s suddenly giving me a disclaimer. What am I not supposed to be liking?

Within another hour, I find out.

I look down at the bundle of fake feathers, hopefully fake fur and glitter pants. Tess is still holding a black box with what sounds like glass containers stored inside. What in the world is all this stuff?

“Tess?” Ven questions cautiously as soon as she sees what new costume the wolf has brought me.

“Yeah, I know. Hear me out. Winter, you’re...not suited for the tough tod look. Let’s face it here, you’re, uh...pretty. Not saying that’s a bad thing, but it is something we can use. Sully is a fan of Woolton John, who was famous for his wild costumes and flashy performances. Right? Okay, so...I was thinking we could use your...sleek shape to our benefit. You know, work with what we have.”

“What...do I have?” I almost choke out, a creeping feeling of dread starting to sink in.

Suddenly, I feel two paws running their way down my shoulders to my ribs, and then further on to my hips. Ven pops up from behind me and gives a little yip.

“Vixen shape!” she barks, unaware of how poorly someone could take being told that. My body freezes from her basically feeling me up, but beyond that, I just don’t know how to feel.

These are clothes that a vixen would wear…

To look sexy.

Or at the very least, be eye-catching and appealing to look at in a primal sense.

Tess wants me to dress up like a female…

“What...what’s that?” I ask nervously, extending one claw out to the black box in her grip. She sighs and opens it for me and Ven to see.

It’s makeup.

They want to pretty me up to see if I would be hot enough to impress the pig who ruined my fucking life. Thoughts of this working inevitably lead to nightmarish mental images of the Boss taking me backstage and…

The feathered costume plops to the floor as I retreat backwards to the other side of the bed. My body moved without my permission and now I’m curled up between the bed and the wall, in the same place I had been when I first met Tess. Only this time, I don’t have a den of blankets and pillows to hide in. Just my own glistening white fur. My tail makes a solid enough shield from the horrors of reality so I stuff myself into it and cower.

“C’mon, Winter! I know you don’t want to do this, but I need you to at least try! This is your life on the line!” Tess calls from over the bed.

“Winter?” Ven’s softer voice flows down and tingles my ears. I look up a bit and see her staring down at me with worry. When I don’t immediately move, she slides herself down next to me and presses up against my body.

A calming sensation spreads through me.

It’s just Ven.

She wants what’s best for me.

Tess too…

Even if I don’t like the idea of being paraded around as a female...it’s still better than being used as a toy.

They’re not doing this to hurt me...just to help me. I have to at least try…

A warmth touches my cheek. I peer up and see that Ven’s lips are pressed against my face. She practically breathes fire into me with how quickly I heat up. My eyes widen and any feelings of panic are quickly drained.

“Please try…” she whispers to me. Denying her at this point might actually break my heart, so what choice do I have?

“Okay…” I answer just as quietly. She smiles proudly and helps me up. The feather costume is sitting on the bed and Tess is in the doorway, making sure she’s not close enough to scare me back into hiding. I can tell she’s starting to realize what negative feelings I’m associating her with. Again, it’s purely my subconscious getting the better of me, but does she know that?

I go into the bathroom and redress myself in a similar manner to before. But this time, I’m not assaulted by the sounds, smells and gaudy nature of the last outfit. These new clothes fit fairly well, are flexible without the noise and smell distinctly like perfume.

A vixen has worn these clothes before.

Is she still alive?

I try not to think about it. Wearing the clothes of a poor mammal who might just be an article of clothing somewhere isn’t exactly a pleasant aspect to my current situation.

The shirt is basically just a slimmer version of the shirt I had already been wearing, and the stretchy glitter pants are pretty comfy. The last main piece is the titular feather piece that appears to be held on like a necklace. The necklace itself is studded with some sort of precious stones.

I attach the costume and secure it around my neck. The necklace digs in slightly, feeling almost like a noose threatening to shut my lights off forever. How ironic that it’s part of an outfit that they’re hoping will help me.

I don’t even bother looking in the mirror. I know I wouldn’t like what I would see. The shirt and pants hug my shape so snugly that I know for sure that I’m probably looking very pretty right now.

My paw lands on something and startles me a bit. The object crumples easily under my weight, leading me to believe that it’s just a piece of the outfit I hadn’t noticed.

It’s a hat.

A black and white cap with a sort of wave or zigzag pattern all over. The pattern almost makes me go cross-eyed. It’s got a belt securing the rim and a buckle attached to the front, though the buckle is probably decorative. The thing that really catches my eyes is the silver leaf pin attached to the side opposite the buckle.

The hat itself looks fairly cheap, but the pin strikes me as something personal. I think...whoever owned this hat, this was something important to them. Maybe a gift from a kit or a family heirloom. I can feel the emotion swirling around it in the same way I can feel the value in my dad’s remaining objects that I have hidden away in the drawer.

I wonder if Tess knows about the pin. I didn’t see the hat when she gave the clothes to me, so it might have been jammed between the feathers and pants without her knowing.

Oh, well. It’s a pretty good looking hat, maybe it’ll match my outfit. I slide the hat between my ears, noting that it’s a bit large on me. All I have to do to keep it planted there is to move my ears against it, though.

As I finish dressing and walk back out of the bathroom, I’m treated to two distinct sharp inhales. Tess and Ven almost gasp when they see what I’ve become.

With the feather thing strapped to my back, I must look like some kind of snowy bird. Ven’s eyes trail all over me, which heats me up a bit.

But Tess is just staring at the hat.

“Where...did you get that?” she asks suddenly, sticking a claw out to point to the top of my head. I’m already regretting putting this thing on.

“It was in the pile…” I mumble timidly. I don’t want her thinking I stole it from somewhere or anything.

Her eyes slant down and a lot of the previous energy she was displaying drains out of her. Ven and I both look at her in concern.

“I’m sorry, I’ll take it off. I didn’t take it…” I start apologizing but she quickly wakes herself back up and waves her paws.

“No, no! It actually looks really good! I’m sorry, Winter, I didn’t mean to make you think I was mad at you. I think you should keep wearing it,” she tries to assure me.

I don’t know what to think anymore.

“Now then…” Tess pipes up, trying to change the subject as quickly as she can. “Let’s try getting some of this on you. It could make all the difference in the end.”

She gestures to the bag of makeup.

A lump forms in my throat, forcing me to painfully swallow it down...just like my pride.

“Okay…” I relent, moving to the bed to allow myself to be ‘made over.’ I’m already no longer who I used to be, so what’s a little extra change? Maybe I’ll like looking like a vixen. The outfit is suitable enough for me, maybe I’m just destined to look this way.

But each little sponge or pad she rubs into my fur doesn’t feel like destiny. It just itches. And I can already feel it solidifying. Only a few minutes in and I already feel gross.

But as Tess works on making me pretty, I can see Ven out of the corner of my eye looking at me with an increasingly astounded expression. Something about the look she’s giving me tells me that I either look absolutely ridiculous...or the makeup actually works on me.

When Tess finishes and takes a step back to admire her own work, her eyes widen a bit.

“Stand up for a sec…” she requests. I do what she wants and jump off the bed to join her on the carpet.

Ven makes the bed squeak as she crawls closer to get a better look at me. Both sets of eyes are sparkling in wonder.

What do I look like?

I need to know!

Without waiting for them to say anything, I glide my way to the bathroom, realizing only after I arrive that I had been strutting. Why am I getting so into this? I haven’t even seen what I look like and I’m already-!

Oh…

Oh wow.

Tess must be experienced with grooming. The makeup she expertly applied highlights the blue in my eyes and creates a contrast that makes my face look absolutely stunning. 

With the slim-fit clothing, feathers, hat and makeup...I look like an actual vixen. My age doesn’t matter, I could probably pass for a showfox right now.

I just...I just can’t believe that this is me. 

Well...it isn’t really me.

This...is Winter.

“Hey, bud! How about you give that song another go while we’ve got you all pampered up?” Tess calls from outside the door.

After taking one last good look at what his body has turned into with just with a simple outfit change, Winter turns away from the fox in the mirror and rejoins his friends. It shames him to realize that he’s sauntering as he walks.

The feathers make one last rustle sound before the door clicks shut and the mirror is once again bathed in darkness.


End file.
